Summer in the City
While I’ve been pondering the task of how to explain my response to Korean food in the last year a lot has happened. I’ve left England and returned to Korea, stopped planying and returned to work, and have also begun to sweat enough to fill a small paddling pool with warm, satly drops of agony. I’d heard that the Korean summer is hot, and whoever said that was right. However, the many people who have complained about this to me don’t have the advantage I have, and so I will postpone my thoughts on food to entertain thoughts about the weather instead.
My advantage is this: I was born in the United Kingdom. You see, in the UK, every moment of sun counts, and every ounce of warmth we can grasp is taken full advantage of. I remember an advert on TV a while back (though as with all good adverts I can’t remember what it was for) in which British people were sat in their offices, at home or wherever they happened to be, looking miserably out of their windows. The scene changed dramatatically when the clouds parted and the Great British Summer began. People ran out of their offices, stripped down to their pre-prepared swimsuits and flooded every spot of beach, park and road with bare, pale skin. As the sun became patchy, groups of people were seen moving with it to keep out of the shade, and towards the end of the advert the sun finally disappeared and went back to their offices. And that was summer. No doubt half of them were already burnt.
We just don’t get very much sun. Usually.
And so, when I’m fronted with a wall of heat when I walk out of my classroom in the evening, I smile. When I sit in a restaurant and look out of the window I think it looks like jumper weather outside, and then mentally leap for joy that (social acceptability aside) I could happily walk aruond naked without a chill. When I get back to my room and find it’s even hotter than outside, I turn on the fan and get on with it. Later, when I wander around my apartment doing menial chores such as ironing, I’m pleasantly surprised to find that my back has turned into a waterfall and a large pool has formed around my feet.
Though this sounds a little offputting, I find it much preferable to making the most of a few moments of sun, or the gradual frost that would have crept around every surface of my apartment in winter had I not spent as much as I did on heating, keeping the temperature roughly similar to that of a small furnace.
And it will be over soon, too. In just five days it will mark exactly a year since I first arrived in Korea, and by that time last year I’d just missed the worst of the summer and everything was cooling to an altogether much more pleasant state.
I can’t wait for that again. If you ever come to Korea, make it in Autumn. You will never experience better weather!
톰
Sounds as if you have embraced the heat and changing seasons in your adopted country, Tom. Good on you! If you can’t change it – make the most of it! Love and miss you.
Grandma (suffering the last of the heat of the English summer, which is considerably longer than the Scottish one, which I was brought up with. But the English don’t get the amazingly long days you get in Scotland! I can remember going to bed at 11pm and it still being light)