The joy of trash

Well, we have been here a month now and we FINALLY think we have the trash system figured out, at least well enough for us to get by. They recycle all kinds of things here (paper products, glass, plastic, metal, food scraps) in addition to the regular garbage. There is a four page manual on how to do the trash here (no lie, four pages, Al has seen it) and it took a month to figure out how to make it all work correctly. in the basement of our building are recycling bins for glass (pop in glass bottles!), plastic, cans, and cardboard and paper products. There is a guy who it appears is his full time job to continually sort and bundle the recyclables in the basement parking garage. He has a chair sitting there and everything, but you only see him like once a week but the stuff is constantly done. In addition, there are trash bins for red bag trash outside of the garage near the entrance. What is red bag trash you ask? good question. It is basically regular garbage you accumulate, the only caveat being you have to put it in this red bag. The red bags are like plastic shopping bags (in fact, some stores will pack your groceries in them as well) that come in 3 sizes (which we just found out about a week ago). You MUST use these bags for your garbage as we found out the hard way. The first time the cleaning lady came to the apartment (she comes with the place, I didn't hire her, and she doesn't speak any English) she threw a fit at Lynn and had to call the rental agency liaison over to the place because she refused to take out our garbage because it was in a white plastic bag. We just began using our grocery bags because that is what we had, but that apparently is unacceptable. Our agency guy ran out and got us a bunch of 20L bags to use (typical grocery bag size) so we would not have a repeat of this ugly incident. We then set out to find where to buy the mysterious red bags, thinking you should be able to buy trash bags somewhere, like hefty bags in red or something. They DO NOT sell any trash bags on Geoje island. The red bags are available behind the counter and you have to ask for them and you buy them individually. They just have rolls of them and they give you what you ask for. We also discovered that they make 50L bags as well, which actually fits the trash can so we are not just setting a bag under the sink to fill with crap. They also have no disposals here, they have a mesh basket in the drain to catch your food scraps. Some people use small trash cans to gather the scraps which they eventually recycle somehow. Expats typically do not do this, as having a small trash can of food under the sink leads to all sorts of flies and bugs and the like, as exhibited by the food bins in the MiniStop, which when you open them flies come out by the dozen. It is not a pleasant experience, without even getting to the smell involved. Speaking of the MiniStop, there are a TON of convenience stores around Korea. They all have American names as well. MiniStop, Family Mart, GS 25, 7-11 (yes, 7-11 but no slurpies). The amusing thing is when they translate the names to Korean, they do it directly. So Family mart is not the Korean words for family and mart, but actually family mart. So when you hear them talk about it, you hear a bunch of words you don't understand, then family mart, then more Korean. It is like a persons name. These places are open 24/7, and have the basic necessities like back in the states. The convenience food (hot dogs, mini burritos, etc.) are completely unrecognizable and have sticks through them, like squid on a stick or something. I am afraid to actually try any of it at this point. They are very trusting of people as well. Ethan and I were at the ministop looking for more red bags and the guy was out. He actually left the store and drove to the other ministop for five minutes and returned while leaving us in the store completely unattended. We could have taken everything including the cash register before he got back. I cannot imagine a guy leaving 7-11 wide open and unattended for 5 minutes with customers there, but there is virtually no crime here (other than traffic violations by the thousands)...