Go-Go Dancers vs. Cow Costumes

Bonus
Go-go dancers. Koreans love go-go dancers and they will find any excuse to hire a couple. Generally they are used as a means of advertisement. They have microphones, loud music, flashy signs, and even flashier costumes. New businesses seem to find that go-go dancers really bring in the customers. The dance, they sing, they shout some stuff in Korean that I don't understand and they are totally captivating. Yes I will admit I have stopped dead in my tracks on a busy shopping street to watch the go-go dancers, but usually it's out of sheer confusion that I stare at them rather than admiration. Mostly I find myself asking, "why?" A butcher shop opened up on the corner of the building that my school is in. I think it's grand opening was Friday and all weekend and into this week they have been promoting their hearts out. First there was the big, inflatable, dancing puppet. Next it was the overly loud rhythmic mucic. Finally it was the go-go dancers. Why they would opt for go-go dancers instead of a man in a cow costume is beyond me.

Drawback
Not participating in daylight savings time. I guess I've never really thought about how cool daylight savings time is. It always just came and went with very little fanfare and I was usually nonethewiser. I mean occassionally there would be a year where your mom would forget to tell you and you'd wake up late for school or be totally psyched when you woke up early and realized you still had an hour to sleep. I bet people in the Western hemisphere really take the whole thing for granted. I have lived in Korea long enough to have surpassed one daylight savings time/day without actually experiencing it at all. The day came and went like it does every year only in Korea we didn't change our watches back an hour. This doesn't seem like such a big thing but truly it is. For example the mornings are brutal. The sun rises at 7 in the morning when I am still sleeping. It pours in the windows and floods my dreams with its stark brightness and I hate it for that. I had to steal one of those ridiculous eyemask things from work just to survive the mornings. On a side note, why we have eyemask things at a Korean kindergarden is beyond me but I'm grateful for it.

By the time the sun has gone clear across the sky and is ready to set it's only like 4pm. Do you know how confused my kids get when I ask them what the weather is like after the sun has already gone down? The answer is supposed to include something about the sky conditions and the temperature but when there's no sun they don't know what to do. They end up just saying cloudy because they know for certain that it isn't sunny and then they get upset when I beat them for being wrong. The correct answer is "this evening it is dark and cold" but they are pre-programmed to say that "today it is sunny/cloudy and warm/cold". Poor little bastards suffer so, because for some reason Korea is too good for daylight savings time.

The other downfall about it being dark at 5:00pm is that I assume that it's much later than it really is. It looks like it's 10 o'clock at night so I should probably go home because it's getting late. I couldn't possibly go into town/watch a movie/go to a restaurant at this hour!!!! Sometimes I have to smack myself around a bit to remind myself that it's only 6pm and going home now would result in at least six hours of continuous bad t.v.