The one big negative about the job? There is not a single Western-style toilet in my building. Six floors of squatters (I have not yet checked this out personally, but my coworker shared this info with me). For those of you NOT in Asia, this is what I'm talking about:
God help you when you have sudden diarrhea in a restaurant and the last thing on your mind is grabbing napkins from the table, because in Korea you typically should always keep some toilet paper with you. Often times, there's a toilet paper vending machine just OUTSIDE the restroom. I heard from one poor fellow that the first time he used the vending machine, he ended up with a maxi pad. Luckily, Koreans also don't flush their toilet paper--it goes in the garbage can conveniently placed next to the toilet. However, I'm a rebel and flush the paper anyway because I refuse to touch that thing. Apparently, I am not the only one.
I'm happy to say I've only had to use a squatter 3 times since coming to Korea, but I fear that number may be increasing. So far I've successfully managed to just hold it until I got home, but I'm sure that at some point in the next year I will not be able to just hold it for 6 hours. It's just such an ordeal--I'm so paranoid about peeing on my pants that I have to take them off every time, which usually means the shoes have to come off too. (However, it was recently suggested that as a woman, I should try keeping my knees together--it forces the pee straight down or something like that.) Also, there's no way to support yourself in these little hell dungeons, so you really just have to either have really good balance or hold on to the wall to keep from falling in.
So aside from the toilet situation, things are pretty good. Oh, and we joined a ridiculously expensive gym, but since there don't seem to be any other options we didn't really have a choice in the matter. I'm now going to make use of our ridiculously expensive gym membership.
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