Good for Health

The famous Korean quote is 'Good for Health!' - eat this seaweed, good for health. drink this ginger and honey drink, good for health. The gym we go to has the motto - Health and Beautiful Life for you.

Well, Tuesday morning Craig was just about to leave for Taekwondo when he smelled smoke. He opened the door to our 'laundry room'/back balcony and there was smoke coming up from the drain pipe. And it smelled horrible - like gas. So we were a little freaked that someone's apartment was on fire or something was burning. He went into the stairwell and it was thicker smoke - so much he started to feel light-headed and i was not feeling well either. We opened up every window in our apartment and Craig went to talk to the security guard. Remember, we've lived in this country for under 4 months, so when i say he went to 'talk', i mean 'play charades' with him. Craig said 'lots of smoke' with arms moving like smoke, 'aparte' which actually means apartment in Korean (good job Craig!) and said 'coughing' and coughed lots.
The man actually understood him! and said 'open the windows. it's ok.' and laughed and smiled. he gestured back to craig to open windows, but we know that sentence.
We were really confused as to how gaseous smoke could be 'ok' and opening the windows would be the answer.
We got our school to call the apartment building and found out that the week before they had been playing over the apartment complex loud speakers the warning that they would be fumigating for cocroaches. Unfortunately for us, we couldn't understand the lady. Looking back on it now, we realize she was announcing something much more often than she ever had.
When our school called the apartment they were to assure us that what they were using was not harmful to humans. Really. a gaseous, toxic smoke is not harmful to humans.
Does that mean it's 'good for health?' You just never know in this country...what may not be good for us back home seems to be fine for us in South Korea!