Umbrellas

Umbrellas are extremely popular here.  If its rainy, up come the umbrellas.  Even when you are hiking through the woods.  We are very impressed with the people who bicycle holding their umbrella above their head, and here its normal!  People (except us) don't even look twice.  Its not just while its raining either.  People also use their umbrellas in the sun!  This isn't just a girl thing to try to keep their skin white, guys do it too. 

Riley and I do not use umbrellas.  The last time I used one was when I got one as a gift my freshman year of college.  Then I misplaced it and switched to raincoats.  I don't think Riley has ever had an umbrella.  In America, raincoats are normal.  Here, whenever we wear our raincoats, the Koreans around us get very concerned.  They ask where our umbrella is, so we try to explain that our coats are waterproof.  Sometimes I don't think they really believe us.  One of the street sweepers stopped us the other day and tried to give us his extra umbrella.  We turned him down pointing to our raincoats and trying to demonstrate their ability to shed water, but clearly raincoats are not normal here.

Because of all this, we were kind of smug this week when the typhoon hit.  It didn't hit Daejeon very hard, but there were many gusts of wind.  We walked around in our raincoats and watched all the people around us struggle with their umbrellas against the wind.  I think if typhoons were the norm around here, our raincoats would not stand out so much when it rains.