Seeing Differences

A couple of weeks ago I spent two weeks in Korea. I haven't done much international travel (I'm not sure Canada before I was 12 really counts). I was struck by--you'll be shocked--differences, as well as similarities.

When we first got off the plane and my brother-in-law was driving us through the city I was struck by how absolutely normal it felt. Only when I focused did I notice that most of the cars were muted colors and small (not really any pickup trucks or suburbans).

Walking around at the park there were violets, dandelions, plantains and magpies... pretty ordinary. Although the magpies did seem to be a slightly different variety.

The people, well they looked Asian. After I'd been there a week instead of noticing that everyone looked Asian I noticed when people were white.

Seoul was a city with big buildings, crowded streets and busy people. And yet, they did a remarkable job with making green space within the crowded streets.

Rocks were typically metamorphic with some igneous thrown in where in the western US sedimentary with a bit of igneous is more common (well where I am).

We went to some museums filled with projectile points, swords, cannons, and groundstone. All things I've seen in museums before but the projectile points were ground instead of flaked. The swords didn't have cross hilts. The cannons were a lot earlier and included rocket fired arrows. The groundstone was different... I just don't know enough about it to explain it. 

And touring Seoul with midget kin including a baby, it was obvious how much Koreans as a whole love children, particularly babies. They all clucked at, and smiled with my baby niece... and yet as a whole there wasn't many children around.
I'd sum it all up, but the problem is some of it wasn't sums... they were differences.
I was fascinated by how much the same a completely foreign culture and country was, and yet because it was the same it was easier to notice the differences.
Is that what always makes differences more apparent?