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I will try to look at how far I have come rather than how far I have left to go...

Today, February 6th, is my six monthiversary here in Korea. How do I feel about that? I keep trying to silence my real feelings, those of loneliness, boredom, unhappiness and despair at the still seemingly endless journey ahead of me, but I'm obviously not doing a very good job. When I first got here I knew that six months would be such a huge milestone and it seemed so far away yet so attainable at the time. Now that I have finally reached it I only feel regret that it isn't nine months or even thirteen months where I would find myself already rid of this place.
I have good Korea days and bad Korea days and this is most definately a bad Korea day. I try to remind myself of the reasons I came here. What were they again? Oh yeah, adventure, money, experience, self-discovery. Yep, uh huh, ok, got it...can I go now?
My six monthiversary came and went with very little pomp or flare. I can of course always remember this as the day that I finally watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith, but those of you who have also seen it will know that it isn't really something worth remembering. Instead I will mark this day with the following addition to my growing list of drawbacks and bonuses of life in Korea. I will not, however be including a bonus for today because quite simply I can't think of one right now.

Drawback-vomit and other nasal and intestinal discharge underfoot

If you are a frequent reader of blogs relating to foreign perspectives of life in Korea, then this will probably seem an overexploited topic to you. I do however feel as though it is a cause for major cultural disagreement between Koreans and well...me. I also believe that there are few other accounts of this information that offer quite the statistics as mine, so without further ado...
Today on my walk from Wonderland to the bus after a long day of work I counted six piles of puke. I will say it once more, six piles of human vomit. You might ask if I find my place of employment in the near vicinity of a large college campus or if perhaps this past weekend was some major local or national festival of some sorts that would warrant, (although in the minds of this writer certainly not justify,) such an abundance of puke. The answer is 'no'. I encountered and dodged six piles of puke in the no more than three minutes walk from work to the bus on a Monday evening, and this is by no means unusual. The seemingly high number of six is even conservative in my mind because I was counting only the piles that contained obvious remnants of rice and kimchi and left out the questionable stains on the sidewalk with high volumes of spittle.
I was surprised and then shocked to discover just how much Korean people drank when I first got here. I assumed the stereotype that most Asians drank very little if at all, applied to Koreans as well. I was snapped into reality within my first weekend here just taking a stroll around my hotel where I saw a plethora of neon illuminated signs advertising "beer city", "beer, soju, cocktail" and "hof" in addition to such deadly alcoholic creations as the "soju kettle" and the "soju tent". While it seems to me that all Koreans, regardless of age or sex, drink quite regularly. I have frequently seen a couple of women out at a bar sharing a small bottle of whiskey or each enjoying a bottle of soju to themselves, but the most common site is that of the drunken and belligerant "adjoshi". This is a Korean word which refers to middle-aged business men of the kind found wearing loosely fitting suits and slowly swaggering down the streets with seemingly no purpose. They are the ones who blatantly gawk and stare at you and who hit on the secretaries who work at your school. Here I am describing my boss, the owner of my school, C.J., the CJ'er as we like to call him. Anyway it is mostly these men responsible for doing most of the drinking and hence most of the puking at ALL and I literally mean ALL hours of the day and ALL days of the week. They are the ones whom you dread sitting next to on the subway because they wreak of soju and garlic, and their glassy bloodshot eyes and beat red faces are like warning signs for a potential onslaught of an intestinal potpourri.
Anyway the point of this entry is to pose the question, why is it acceptable for these men, or anyone for that matter, to continuously throw up in public places with no attempt made by them or the local authorities/municipality to clean it up? I will have to pass those six piles of puke everyday for the rest of the week. I will count them everyday and will monitor their slow dissipation and wonder who was unfortunate enough to help in the process by treading through it. Public drunkeness is not only illegal in most countries but it is also highly frowned upon. I mean, when was the last time you saw a grown man lose his lunch, dinner, snack and part of his stomach lining because he couldn't handle his liquor, and felt anything but disgust or pity towards him? Public displays of alcoholic ineptitude are reserved for the 18 year old college freshmen with a mini-skirt and a pony-tail, not grown adults with a briefcase and a hyundai.

In order to let the majority of the rest of the population slide by without so much as a scathing word in their direction would be highly unjust. So, while the puking might be bad I rarely actually witness it. I do however, witness and am thoroughly disgusted by on a daily basis, the hacking, snorting and spitting of what are the biggest and most disgusting loogies around. The sound of someone attempting to dislodge some sort of nasal blockage is rude and vulgar in and of itself even if the person is planning on swallowing it*. It is off the charts disgusting when they spit it out, especially if they make no effort to find a grassy spot, garbage can or bush to spit it on. In an attempt to put the gravity of this matter into perspective I will share with you an experience not of mine but of my friend Jennifer's. She jumped aboard a bus to work one day and promptly took a seat at the back of the bus, whereupon she sat and began to get comfortable for the journey to school. While she was readjusting her feet she happened to look down and saw splattered and squiggling right there between her sneakers a big green loogie. The bus was crowded so she couldn't change her seat so she had to consciously place her feet elsewhere so as to circumvent the disgustingly slimy blob of human DNA. It is appaling in my mind that someone would EVER spit anything on a public bus let alone a full on green loogie.
Like the piles of puke that I counted I have twice attempted to count the loogies on the five minute walk from my house to Jennifer's. I have failed both times because the task became too tedious or I lost count. Please don't think that I in am going out of my way to seek out and count these things cause that is not at all the case. Both the vomit and the loogies are totally unavoidable and if I didn't keep my eyes constantly towards the ground I would absolutely step in one or many, and I like my shoes way too much for that. The loogie epidemic in Korea can be likened with similar experiences of mine in Belgium. Although etiquette and current practices may have changed since I lived there but when I did it was absolutely imperative that one always walk with their eyes downcast so as to avoid stepping in "dog bombs". There was dog shit literally all over the sidewalk and no matter how careful you were it was almost inevitable to avoid treading through it.
Just like pet owners need to curb their dogs, Koreans need to curb themselves, or better yet refrain from spitting and puking outside entirely.

*the writer gagged just typing this