Cultural Difficulties

I've been sick all week, one of those nasty colds that leaves your sinus' aching and your body tired. I SHOULD be posting about the Hanukkah party from Sunday and posting those pictures but that would require me moving...they'll get up on the blog eventually. I actually did take some photos this time.

Okay, enough excuses as to why I haven't been writing. Why am I writing now?
This is a rather long rant about preparations for traveling:

Friday I am flying to Borneo, Indonesia. This is exciting right? Only I can't find anything I need for my trip and suddenly realized I should have started looking WEEKS ago. It took me 30 minutes to find sunblock at Emart today. I finally gave up trying to look for it myself and used the dictionary function on my cell phone and held it up to one of the sales people. [My cell phone does everything but make coffee and this was the cheapest one they had. Maybe the nicer phones DO make coffee, in which case, I want one.] I couldn't find travel sized ANYTHING. Not even little bottles I could convert to traveling purposes, I checked housewares too. That's what I did when I went to France, bought the little bottles and filled them up because when you are moving somewhere for a year you don't want to bring the big bottles AND the little ones, it takes up too much space. So now I'm going to look like I have no idea how to travel properly when I show up with my full size bottles of shampoo and conditioner. [No, I cannot go without my conditioner for a week, don't even THINK of asking something so terrible of me. Unless I am camping in which case I wouldn't bring either.] Then I spent a fortune on the one American brand of tampons that the store had. They had an aisle full of Korean brands that were much cheaper but I couldn't read the package and it was just too intimidating. And while I ask my Korean friends for recommendations and advice on many things, tampons just don't come up in conversation very often [read: ever]. My last frustration: they carry Neutregena products which is amazing since that's what I use BUT THEY DIDN'T HAVE ANY OF THE FACIAL ONES HERE!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm almost out of the stuff that has the SPF 30 uva/uvb protection which I put on every morning to keep away the harmful rays and whatnot. I know it doesn't sound like a big deal but I can't read the packages of domestic brands so if I can't get what I know it makes it very difficult to buy anything. For things like shampoo, I would have taken a travel size in any brand. However, the pollution makes my skin freak out so much as it is that I don't want to play with it.

This all seems very silly and I know that once I get near the beach I really won't care about being stressed about things like travel size shampoo bottles but it's just a little stress that I don't need.

Today, for Christmas my boss gave me a cake. She gave all of us a cake. My boss knows I'm seriously allergic to milk and milk products so she gave me a gift that not only can I not enjoy, it is also tortorous to me since I would really love some cake. She remembered just as she handed it to me and was like, 'oh you can give it to your friends?' I said thank you and was polite and all but I think a bottle of wine or soju or something would have been much nicer. My Chusok present was way better: a case of tinned ham which I am still working through. I eat it whenever I run out of groceries and need a snack. It's lovely that she got us all gifts, it really is, I just really would LOVE some cake and I have one sitting in my fridge now that I can't eat. I'm going to bring it to the expat bar tonight and let the other foreigners drown their sorrows in icing. At least it's not a chocolate cake, that would have been cruel.

Right now I should be getting ready to go out but my apartment hasn't warmed up yet and I'm loath to take a shower when it's this frigid in here. I think I need to start leaving the heat on a little during the day, maybe super low but enough that it doens't take 2 hours to heat up when I come home. Unfortunately, the cheapskate in me has a deep aversion to this solution. I'll continue huddling under my comforter with my laptop for a couple of hours when I come home for now. I can't wait for Indonesia, 80-90 degree weather. BALMY WONDERFULNESS!