Motivated by little more than the general lack of jobs available to recent grads in the United States and a vague desire to travel, I decided to spend a year in South Korea. I had never been very far from New York for very long, spoke no Korean and knew little about the job I was taking, teaching English as a second language to Korean students. I wanted to see palaces, museums and cultural festivals (and I have seen a few). I arrived in Seoul expecting to be overcome by a feeling of foreignness, but, from the high-rises to the Starbucks, Seoul looked like New York City.

In the month and a half I’ve been in Seoul, I’ve found that the differences between living in the U.S. and living in Korea are in little aspects of everyday life I typically overlook. For example, people seem to prefer wallpaper to paint, kitchens are not generally equipped with ovens, and clothes are dried on racks because there are no dryers. People do not litter, and are strict about separating their trash. They also do not jaywalk, even if there are no cars anywhere in sight. The subway stations are antiseptic and quiet. Strangers shush those who speak too loudly on the train, and beggars kneel silently like they’re saying prayers. The tones of the city are less rudely mechanical than back home; alarms don’t buzz, they hum.

I worry about making Americans look bad. I don’t want to reinforce negative stereotypes of Americans in foreign countries. I don’t want to be that white woman running across the four-lane street while the Koreans wait patiently for the light to change (even when I know I could totally make it). I don’t want to be the person babbling English to my fellow commuter, oblivious that everyone on the train is staring. And then there are cultural customs to pick up: when a superior pours you something, it is respectful to hold your glass with both hands and you should never write a person’s name in red because it means the person is dead. I feel a lot of pressure to be more socially astute than I’ve ever been before (And to dress better. Koreans are snappy dressers.).

But the thing that has really shocked me is how people are the same. The children I teach go to regular school for six hours a day, and then to extra academies (called hagwons) for another 8 hours. I was horrified when I learned how much time Korean children spend in school each day. They have no time to play or socialize. I expected learning machines, but that is not what I received. These children talk out of turn and touch each other and steal each other’s erasers just as much as the American children I’ve worked with. I’ve confiscated everything from cell phones to plastic swords. There is so much more emphasis put on education in Korea than in the U.S., both by society and by the family, and the children still ask if we can play hangman instead. Despite their drastically different lives, it seems that kids are pretty much kids.

I have much more to learn about Korea, and I have a long list of sites left to see. But so far I’ve learned more from my observations and interactions than from the requisite tourist sites and activities.