Umbrellas ( 우산 "oo-san" ) of all Things

The weather in NWPA has been absolute crap lately. Cold & Rainy. Something, something, storms someplace. Anyway, I'm visiting Meadville and I left Jeremy's apartment to go do some Visa paperworky stuff (yes, that's still happening. ugh.). By the way...the Meadville post office is open 24 HOURS PER facking DAY. SWEET MOSES. That's like the coolest thing. But I digress. On my way out, I grabbed an umbrella and as I grumpily tromped towards the bank, pouting about the newest crap direction my acne has headed, I felt a bit silly. And I remembered that for the five years I lived in Meadville, I never owned an umbrella. It rains all the damn time here (meh, 44in. annually)...but I just couldn't be bothered with the damn thing for whatever reason. I hate holding extra stuff when I walk around and that pet peeve beat out being cold and wet.

And in Korea, people luuuuuuuuurve umbrellas. Ho-ly crap. If it's barely even sprinkling, the streets are a sea of (very fashionable) umbrellas. Korean children are told that because of acid rain, if their hair gets wet, it'll fall out. One of my students repeated this to me with concern and I simply pointed to another student who had decided that the fine mist didn't warrant an umbrella either. I asked my friend Hyun Jung about it and she explained that this is just told to "Korean ladies" to keep their hair pretty. So it's essentially like when your mom says "if you make that face, it'll stay that way." So there's that.

And then there's the parasols.

I've probably mentioned this before, but Koreans are SERIOUS about protecting their skin from the sun. More to the point, they're serious about keeping/making their skin white. And that means face masks, visors, scarves, "arm socks" (also handy for covering your tattoos or, if you're in a biker club, giving you temporary tattoos to look tuff while you ride), gloves, and, you guessed it, umbrellas.

Upon hearing I was moving to Busan, famous for Haeundae beach, my former student Hansuk wrote me: "Do you know Haeundae is registered in Guinness book to numerous parasol. ㅋㅋ" And I tried to explain to him how silly I find parasols. Oh, Korea.

Aaaaaand back to Amrrrrca. While bopping about, I noticed HOW FEW people were carrying an umbrella. Seriously, like no one could be bothered. Most people just scooted along quickly from their car to wherever and got a bit wet. I saw some men with heavy coats and baseball caps. And I felt like a bit of weenie, haha. I have one little swatch of machismo that I guard rather fiercely. And the big men didn't have umbrellas. murr.

Those are my terribly interesting observations on umbrellas ( 우산 "oo-san" ) in Korea and NWPA.

THE END.

P.S. I finally remembered to download [ I Love You Phillip Morris ], a silly little film starring Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor. It was released in South Korea last July and won't release in the States until December. Likely because many audience members would throw rocks at the screen, hahaha (assuming they had brought their own rocks to the theater). I have NO IDEA why it was picked up in K-town. But my friend Kevin and I bought tickets at Mudeung Cinema and were ushered to an underground theater that you had to go outside to get to. And were the ONLY people at that showing. It was awesome! So anyway, downloaded that and when I went to plop the shiny new file into my movies folder (GET ON WITH IT), I saw the Korean movie Harmony ( 하모니 ) in there. I watched about 5 minutes of it and it is THE CUTEST THING. Maybe I can persuade Jeremy to watch it with me. I think my mom would like it for sure...but we'll see if she can be bothered with all the reading. Some people hate that which is fair enough, really.

Anyway, if you feel like watching something Korean and A-DOR-ABLE, download a copy of 하모니 (2010) with subtitles and prepare to squeeee from all the cute. ^^