I know, I know. I more or less promised that I wouldn’t write another post until I got back from Thailand. But you know what? Shut up, that’s what. Because I’ve got something to relate to you. You might remember my mild complaint in my last post about the stifling summertime heat and humidity here in South Korea. After a trip with some friends to Everland (Korean Disneyland, basically) on Sunday I think I can safely say that I undersold the extremity of the situation. I spent five hours outside on Sunday, during which the sun was going and yet I was somehow getting progressively more miserable. If you’ll allow, I will once again make use of my superior artistic abilities to elaborate.
Hour 1: Sweating profusely, but not feeling faint. Adrenaline from roller coasters still managing to help me ignore the bulk of the available misery.
Hour 2: The heat begins to affect my Everland experience ever-so-slightly. Pools of sweat form in spots where I stand for more than thirty seconds. However, a few brief stopovers in air-conditioned areas do a bit to help alleviate the problem.
Hour 3: The sun begins to set, giving the sky a lovely hue known as “Seoul Twilight Smog”. This successfully convinces my body that it might get cooler soon. As a result of that instinct - as well as what is at this point mildly severe dehydration - the sweat begins to slow.
After taking a few swigs of water and trying to walk up a lengthy incline, my body realizes that it has been fooled into thinking it might not be so hot outside anymore, and immediately overcompensates with a sweat frenzy. The Korean Herald’s headline the next day would read: “Sweaty American Drowns Everland, Writes Insensitive Blog on the Subject.”
Most people are familiar with the phrase, “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.” Well, according to my fragile Northern Midwest body temperature regulations, it’s both. Ninety degrees Fahrenheit is hot, and it shouldn’t be foggy out when it’s that hot. And you’d think that it might get cooler when the sun went down, but you’d be wrong. And that line of thinking will get you drowned at Everland.
But as much as I hate the heat, there are creatures in Korea who love it. They love it so, so much, that they sing about it every day. They’re singing about how much they love right now, as a matter of fact. I can hear them. Sometimes, they sing so loudly that if you’re trying to talk to your friend, you have to shout to be heard. They look like this:
That would be a Korean cicada. Now, the ones we have in America are pretty big. Not be outdone, though, Korea went and made them bigger. That picture up there, that’s life-sized, more or less. I have seen them, I have heard them, and I am terrified of them. But not as terrified as I am of what I can only assume to be only creature that actually wants to eat that thing.
We interrupt this blog with a special message from your nightmares.
Yup, that’s an Asian Giant Hornet. Before coming to Korea, I had believed this thing to be referred to as the Japanese Giant Hornet. Had I known it was also available to make you shit your pants in Korea, I would have thought much harder about moving here. But wait, it gets worse. How? Well, imagine looking out for giant cicadas falling from trees and dodging massive hornets as you make your way home through ‘air’ that can be better described as ‘hot soup’. You arrive home, switch on your air conditioner, and proceed to do your laundry. As you look out the window of your laundry room, you notice several giant hornets buzzing about the tree right next to your building. You look a little closer and you see this:
Oh no, you did NOT just bring my mama into this! My mama is a SAINT! A horrifying, bloodthirsty SAINT!
When I saw that, I slammed the window shut and prayed for Autumn. Most times, I love summer. The weather is warm, you can go to the beach and go swimming, sit out in the sun and read a favorite book, or go to an outdoor concert with your friends. Here in Korea, you can sweat until you pass out, at which point giant insects will feast upon your flesh. Or you can make a break for the nearest air conditioning unit and hope nothing too terrible lands on the back of your neck on the way. Once this season passes and I’m able to feasibly go outside for long periods of time again, I will be a much happier man. But ‘til then, dear readers…
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