Rain! Humidity! Heat! Oh My!

After being here only a couple days, there are already so many things that are different. For all intents and purposes being on post is no different and even though it is rather small, there is still enough here to keep you well fed, well entertained and well supplied. Mostly the things that are different for me are weather related things, learning a few key Korean phrases and learning my way around base.

Umbrellas for all!

Now, I knew the weather would be very different here. It is a subtropical environment and gets a lot of rain, is very humid and very hot. I was expecting all that. And I can deal with all that. We bought an umbrella and rain boots and now look like every other American and Korean National bustling down the street in a sea of umbrellas (mind you, it gets very tight and hard to navigate when on cramped sidewalks lol). It's like the whole cast and crew of Singin' in the Rain has moved to Korea and you just know at any moment, you all might spontaneously burst into song, swing on the lampposts and splash in the puddles...doing our best following in the impeccable grace and style of Mr. Gene Kelly.

However, what I wasn't expecting was the little ways the weather effects things...it makes you always feel a little clammy and sweaty (dare I say slimy? lol). It makes your hair frizzy like a fuzzy bear. It negates any need to regularly use lotion solely for moisturizing purposes (my first day here, I put on my usual amount of super moisturizing lotion and found my extremities to be very slippery and slimy...I wasn't absorbing it like I used to in dry Nevada. Lesson learned...I will save a lot of money on lotion lol). The heat is definitely different here...it's a constant heat that seems to make you alway a bit sweaty and feel the need to cut your hair and after any physical exertion outdoors, you come home, peel your clothes off and try to not be grossed out by the overall sliminess that has taken over your body. Ewww. lol.

So much water!

However, all that is manageable and odd as it sounds, the hardest thing for me to get used to with all the humidity is how it effects paper. It literally makes paper flimsy and (no, I'm not exaggerating) if feels as though it is slightly damp. It is the weirdest thing...I never knew how stiff and straight our paper was in Nevada, but with how dry it is, I think that we probably had the stiffest paper known to man (at least it seems that way in such stark contrast to the flimsy damp paper I am now experiencing). And call me crazy, but it is kind of driving me crazy! I don't know why exactly, but all paper just seems to have lost it's integrity and it's ability to be a functional thing. It makes the edges curl on a lot of pages and is easily effected by creases and wrinkles. Heaven forbid you want to present any sort of professional document for any reason...because all the paper here seems as though you were negligent and a) let it fall in a puddle or b) had it in the bathroom while you were showering. Really, I am not making this up. It is extremely odd and rather vexing. Go ahead, call me crazy, but next time you take a nice, hot, long, steamy shower, take some paper in there with you and after you get out, immediately handle it and that, my friends, is how the paper is here in Korea. True story.