White people are not made for tropical countries

Oh fellow and fellow-a blog readers. White people or westerners in Korea sweat like pigs. It's really disgusting to see and to feel--I am the white man after all who sweats with the best of them. I've never seen a pig sweat before; all I know they roll in the mud, make cute sounds and later, when chopped up, taste delicious as "Dun-Cas-Su-a" (Korean) or pork cutlet.

Today, I went to Seoul. It was a hot and humid summer day, typical for August. The only time I stopped sweating was inside the Mesa Fashion Mall eating my pork cutlet and talking to Yanne on the phone and on the $2.00 express bus to Seoul. The rest of the time, I sweated like a pig. I sweated walking to the bus stop; I sweated sitting at the bus stop; I sweated leaving the bus. I sweated walking to Gangnam subway entrance (green line); I sweated going to Coffee Bean in Namdamun Market; I sweated at Namdamun Market; I sweated...

White people sweat horribly here in Korea. Koreans don't sweat like whites and when they do, they don't look dreadful. White people are not made for tropical countries. Our shirts stick to our bodies, our hair becomes matted, we stink. Its embarrassing when we raise our arms and uncover our arm stains. We are fat and out of shape and because a lot of us are big people, we seem out of proportion and a direct contrast to the homogeneous Korean of black hair, average height and same style hair cuts. We are like walls of sweat, moving like bovine beasts on the streets of Itaewon. The Korean street vendors sit there, slowly moving their fans to their faces, not a sweat drip on their brows or lips.

White people look like they are going to die in this weather. We are pale and sickly and can barely walk through the lagoon of humidity that lays here all day and night. Koreans never get that shiny, oily gloss that I had all day, on my body. I looked like a red man with my sweaty forehead and arms; my shirt stuck to my chest, my back pack straps making an "X" when I removed it; my eye glasses slipping down my nose, constantly. Koreans' faces don't turn red when in the sun; they don't sweat the kind of sweat where it falls from your shoulders, down your back, following your spine down to your butt crack, creating a reservoir so when you get up to leave your seat, there's a sweat track! Yuck!

White people in Korea are dressed correctly for this tropical heat but they never manage to adjust to it. I haven't yet. It's been six months of a steady diet of kim chi and I still manage to over produce sweat that makes my shirts stink for days. We need to take two or three showers and change our clothes just as often. Koreans take one shower. I haven't become acclimated and there's no magic code to un-sweat genetics.