the towel trama

Well i learned something new today. It seems that in The Korea, it is taboo to use the same bath towel twice.
It seems a funny fact to learn while working in England, especially as I worked for Koreans for 3 years without ever finding out this great secret....but i guess the topic just never came up. My students in my afternoon class are mainly new to Britain, but sometimes there are things about this country they dont understand, which i find quite normal, as i myself sometimes cannot explain the place. so yesterday, Rosie (not real name) announced she had an important question. This brought us to the subject of bath towels. It seems in The Korea, people use a different bath towel everyday; not only that, but they use a different bath-foot towel (the ones you step on when you get out of the bath) and girls use a different towel for their hair....EVERY DAY. In the summer, they go through double, because it is humid in The Korea and they bathe at least twice. So on adverage, they go through about 7 body towels, and 7 foot mats per week....plus an extra 7 for the girls hair! So, girls can go through 21 towels a week, or 42 in summer. Rosie calculated that her family goes through. Rosie estimated her family goes through 91 towels a week, and double in summer.
So, naturally, Rosie came to England with 10 towels. She lives in a host family. She had noticed from the beginning that they looked at her strangly and a bit angrily every weekend when she did her laundry (which would consist of 8 or so towels) but she couldnt understand why. Hence her question.
The topic sparked a huge debate in my class. When i said that English people wash their towel normally once a week (if that), all the asian students recoiled in utter disgust. It seems Rosie was not alone in her habits, the other Korean and Japanese students all had the same, and they all united in agreement that one towel a week was vile. The European students looked amazed, obviously not having realised how dirty we are seen to be in asian eyes. Then more questions followed: how often do European girls wash their hair? Clothes? Body? Teeth? Who would have ever thought you could construct a lesson around body hygiene? But i guess this falls under the category of “cultural difference.”