What's Public? What's Private?

I've been thinking that a lot of culture shock must be about how our physical experience is different in a new place. And how off balance that can make us feel. (I suppose I should say "make me feel". Not sure where the plural "us" is coming from).

First, there's the whole business of personal space. I know I wrote before about feeling hovered over by salespeople here. I don't feel uncomfortable when talking with people in work or social settings, in terms of the actual physical distance between us. But I do feel crowded in Seoul, probably in the way that an out-of-towner does in NY. But compounded by lack of language. Seoul pedestrians, from what I've seen, are even more aggressive than NY ones.

But what I'm also noticing is how things that we would think are really private in the US are quite visible here. I mean things like hospital patients walking around the park or sitting in the Starbucks (in the hospital lounge/reception area) in their p.j.s. Or people walking around brushing their teeth in the hallways in office buildings on campus. I've started joining my female students for their group toothbrush brigade after lunch. One of them told me that Korean people brush their teeth so religiously because the food is so spicy. It feels like we're in a college dorm bathroom.

Something I haven't been able to figure out though--sometimes toothpaste is available in the bathrooms but paper towels rarely are. So after brushing our teeth and washing our hands we have to drip dry on the way back to class.

Laundry is public here in a way that it isn't back home too. I have a washing machine in my tiny apartment, which is great. But I don't have a dryer, which seems to be the norm. So, I hang stuff to dry on the overhead rack for this purpose by the window. You walk around town and see people's clothes hanging in the windows everywhere. To me, it feels very exposed, showing the world your linens. I try to hang things so bras and panties aren't visible right in the window. But even so it feels odd to have my stuff drying on display. I realize this is common practice in tenements in the U.S., but it's all over here. I look up at the new highrises and see windows and more windows filled with drying laundry.