miscellaneous Korean-ness

As we count down our short time left in Korea, here are some unexpected things William and I have seen or experienced during the past year (in no particular order):

• Road construction equipment with no safety barriers. Example: one day at school one of the high school girls walked right underneath a bulldozer arm that was moving a large pine tree. The bulldozer operator just paused until she was through, then kept working. Wish I'd had my camera out for that one!

• I've seen parents driving with their infants sitting in their laps.

• Children as young as 5 or 6 can often be seen riding the buses alone, or with friends or siblings of similar age.

• Young children not in car seats, or without even a seat belt on. Case in point: on my bike ride home today I pulled up behind a small hatchback at a light. A little boy was kneeling in the backseat watching me. He smiled and waved, and was a cutie, but his mother didn't seem to have an issue with him being up and about.

• 4-way yellow lights: not that this is a big issue since most people pay no attention to red lights anyway.

• It's ok to pass through a red light as long as you put on your blinkers or pull over to the far right as you go through.

• It's also ok to pull over into the opposing lane of traffic to go through a red light if you get stuck behind one of the few people who actually chooses to stop at a red light.

• Pesticide machine: during warm-weather months a truck drives around with what looks like a fog machine attached to the back. Every time he comes by we race around shutting all the windows, otherwise we wouldn't be able to see inside our apartment because the smoke and pesticides are so thick! I wish I knew what it actually is, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's DDT.

• Pedestrians typically have no idea whether cars are coming as they start to cross the street. It apparently never crosses their minds to look both ways. I guess they assume the cars will slow down or stop, which is what usually happens. It truly is amazing that we haven't seen more accidents!

• Children play on busy, busy main streets. Just yesterday we saw a young boy pull out from behind a blind corner on his bike right into a busy 4-way intersection. Again, amazing that everyone avoided hitting him.

• We saw a truck driving backwards on a busy main road, and not just for a few seconds to turn around. He drove backwards for at least 300 meters (several blocks at ~35 mph).

• On most mornings there are dozens of students serving punishment as I am arriving at school. They've barely been there, what could they possibly have done to be in trouble already?! Punishment often consist of standing on all 4's with their butts up in the air, or being hit with a stick (yes, the students do get hit quite a lot here).