Simple Pleasures

Every once in a while I find myself really craving Western comforts. Seoul is a very modern city and in general it is quite comfortable here, though there are always going to be things that are not quite the same. Over the months I've really started noticing what things I take for granted in the States and how excited I get when I get those things here. For example:

1. Cheese. Good cheese is not exactly a common food here. I'm able to find cheddar and pepper jack, but you have to pay a decent price for it.
2. Showers. Most bathrooms in Korea have a shower head that just hangs in the bathroom and drain in the middle of the room. It's really not too bad to shower, but the bathroom is soaked for the rest of the day.
3. American breakfast food. A typical breakfast in Korea includes rice and kimchi. For this reason, I eat a lot of cereal. However, this weekend we found a restaurant serving eggs, bacon, pancakes, waffle, hash browns, etc. I was actually giddy with excitment.
4. COFFEE. While Koreans drink a lot of coffee, they drink instant coffee. Everywhere you go you find little packets of instant coffee mixed with an obscene amount of sugar and cream. The American restaurant had drip coffee, and though it was $4 a cup and far too weak, it was heavenly.
5. Toilets. Many public bathrooms in Seoul have squat toilets rather than toilet seats. This may seem to be an old  thing, but even brand new bathrooms are built with squatters.
6. Throwing toilet paper in the toilet. While on the subject of toilets, most of the plumbing in Korea was not built to deal with toilet paper. For this reason, you have to throw your toilet paper i the trashcan.
7. Stars. With all the lights and pollution of a huge metropolis Seoul, seeing a star is an impossibility in the city.
8. Liquid soap. While liquid soap is available here, it is very common to have public bathrooms with bar soap. While its exciting enough to find a public bathroom with soap in general, I'm not a huge fan of sharing a bar of soap with hundreds of people.