Snow in a Manhole!

Sunday night while most of Seoul slept (does a vibrant pulsing city really ever sleep?) the heavy gray clouds overhead burst and dumped several centimeters of snow over the city scape. I woke to scraping shovels outside my window and when I looked out, the peaked undulating rooves were no longer terra cotta or cement gray but sculpted in the white of the socio-economic status removing blanket of snow. Even the electrical lines were fattened by the thick white heavy snow acrobatically vertically positioned.

Having nothing else to do but loaf (since I quit my job and am waiting for my apartment to sell so I can get my money and leave Korea), I decided to walk in the wet, fast-melting fluff turning to soupy mess. My destination was the riverside but first I wanted some rice cake from the nearby open-air market. The rice cake shops were at the opposite end of the meandering market, and while I was sauntering through the market, like in the villa-area where I live, people were out scrapping at the snow and mounding it. But the peculiar thing is that while in the villa-area there are roads to throw the snow on throughout the day and the cars warm wheels from constant friction melts the stuff, in the narrow twisting lanes of the marketplace, there are no passing cars and neither are there many rays of golden sun to warm the shadowed alley, and so where did I see people putting the snow .....

... in a manhole!

and not only were they putting the snow in the manhole, but they were PACKING IT IN! I just can't figure that out. I seriously wonder about the plumbing over there, but I just laughed ... and took pictures. They'll have to tell me later about the plumbing!!!