One of life’s quirks in Korea is no hot water. Nope, no wonderfully warm water to come rushing out of the faucet the minute you turn it on. No warm water for your bath, to wash your face, do some quick dishes, nada.

Here you have to push a button.

They don’t use hot water heaters – although I’m not exactly sure what the process is called (Jack probably knows). All I know is that it takes oil. Oil we just paid $216 US for last week that’s supposed to last us 6 months.

So in order to take my morning shower I had to walk downstairs & push the little button our real estate agent labeled in English for us. (I don’t know what the other buttons are for – I don’t think she ever told us.) I’m sure they’ll be important come winter because if I remember right this place has heated floors – our only source of heat.

*Mental note: Add that to the list of things to talk to Janice about.

Then it’s walk back upstairs, wait for the water to get warm & climb in the shower.

The problem with this process is remembering to go back downstairs immediately afterward to push that damn little red button. I just noticed (at 2:30pm) that we never turned it off this morning. Crap!

Maybe I should put a sign in the bathroom to remind us, or at the bottom of the stairs.

The irony to all of this is that when we do turn the faucet on & realize there’s hot water coming out of it, we immediately remember we should’ve turned it off before.

Korean Life Lesson #1: Always turn the hot water off.