4 Seasons?

[Katherine]: This weekend officially marks the start of 'summer' in Korea. Korea is very rigid in it's use of the seasons - it has 4 - as I am constantly told by my coteachers/students. Apparently having 4 seasons is an amazing feat and Koreans are all shocked (and I think annoyed) when they find out the UK (and a hell of a lot of other countries) have four seasons too! So, June is officially the start of summer so now all my students are wearing summer dresses and telling me it's 'hot' instead of it's 'warm'. However, it's just all crap. For starters, it's been boiling since May and I even have my weird freckle/tan thing on my fact to prove it!

I'd rather talk about/ stay at this Four Seasons!

I'll let you into a little secret - Korea DOESN'T have four seasons, it has like 2 and then some weird bits imbetween! One of my coteachers even begrudingly admitted it in the car to me yesterday! SSh though, if you tell the Koreans this they will implode as everything they've based their belief system on is a sham! My coteacher says because of 'the global warmers' the winters are getting longer and colder and the summers are getting longer and hotter! Another thing to tick off on my, 'Why Korea Sucks' list!

4 Seasons - yeah right!

This year it seems that spring lasted for about 2 weeks, when the weather warmed up and I didn't have to wear my god awful puffa jacket (which made me look like that marshmellow thing from ghostbusters) anymore! The only feature of spring here seems to be that it's really windy and that we all get sick from the Yellow Dust. The dust is apparently blown to Korea from the Gobi Desert and proceeds to make ESL teachers who are too stubborn to wear that Korean wardrobe staple, the face mask, really sick and itchy. Unfortunately, the side effects of this last well into the summer and I haven't been able to sleep for weeks without scratching my eyes to death, nor can I wear contact lenses. So, I've concluded from this totally scientific evidence that spring and summer are the same thing (both yellow dusty, warm, relatively dry) and therefore the Koreans are wrong and their seasons are wrong and I hate them!! I love summer in the UK (because it lasts for about a week and hits a max of 25 degrees) but here it's just horrid, it's going to be like 35 - 40 degrees and then also be pouring it down all the time!!

The winter is bloody freezing too (especially when you live in a shack up a mountain with no hot water) and lasted for about 5 months. Summer here lasted until mid October, then we had less than a month of 'autumn' - a bit cooler but not freezing and 'beautiful leaves on the mountains' etc, which I didn't seem to notice was even autumn until it got REALLY freezing in November and then I wanted to Autumn back!

It seems that in it's climate (like most other things) Korea seems to give the worst of the worst extremes. For example a freezing winter and boiling summers. Most countries either have one or the other, or are equatorial climates and a similar thing all the year around. I'm not saying the UK is perfect but at least we don't (and I think this is my big bug bear here) have a MASSIVE obsession with it and go on about it like it's a unique and wondrous, or even true, concept!! Get over yourselves Korea and start relabelling your season calendars!!!

Wrong!!!