Taking out the trash, Korean style

We have had to learn to do a lot of things differently in Korea, perhaps one of the most annoying chores that we have is taking out the trash. You see, in Korea they recycle everything, and there is a special way to prepare the trash. We learned how to do this within our first few days or arrving. When we first got here, there was a bunch of stuff in our apartment that we did not want or need, so we put it all in the trash. Our trash can filled up in about one day, but we had no idea where to take our trash. We asked our boss, and she said, "Oh, I forgot to tell you how to take the trash out, there is a special way to do it."
We asked what we needed to do, and she insisted that she come over and show us what to do. She came over and brought some special bags with her. She explained how the trash needed to be sorted and only 'real' trash could be thrown away, everything else had to be recycled. Niether one of us had ever recyled before (unless you count picking up popcans off the side of the road for the deposit) so we asked her what constituted 'real' trash, her reply, "You Know, not paper, not plastic, not metal, not glass, just trash." What other kind of trash is there besides food trash?
Then she looked in our trash can and asked us why we had chicken bones in it. I pointed out that bones are not paper, plastic, metal, or glass so the should go in the trash... not so. So I had to sort out all of our trash, luckily it wasn't too bad, mainly because I don't believe in throwing away anything edible, and because I strip chicken bones completly clean before I throw them away.
She told us the food trash was separate from all of the other trash and had to be put in a special trash can for food only, I will let you imagine what that special food trash can smells like. Because of the smell, niether Christina or I jump at the chance to take the food trash out. If we didn't have a pint sized food trash can, we would probably take it out bi-monthly (or sooner if the smell in the apartment got to bad) It has gotten pretty rank several times, and since niether one of us wants to take it out, we have to resort to Rock, Scissors, Paper, to decide who has to take it out.
Early last week I noticed that the food trash was starting to stink, because of procrastination, we didn't actually take it out until Friday. By that time it was the worst smelling anything that I have ever smelled in my life, worse than a pail full of rotting diapers in midsummer, worse than a landfill, worse than anything. I don't know why it smelled so bad, but it was terrible. We live on the 12th floor, so when we take the elevator, more than half the time there are other people in it with us. When we got on the elevator was empty, and I was silently praying that no one else would get on, about that time a very fashionably dressed lady got on with us. As soon as she stepped in, a look of horror spread across her face, at first she covered her mouth with one hand, but by the time we reached the bottom, she had both hands over her mouth and nose.
We were on our way to gas up the scooter and run some errands, so we were gone for close to an hour. As we were parking the scooter after we had finished, I wondered out loud if the elevator still stunk, it did. It's pretty hard to hold your breath for a 12 floor elevator ride, but I did it. Maybe next time we won't wait so long to take the trash out.
Going back to the special trash bags that we have to use, well the ones that our boss gave us ran out. No problem, I thought, I'll just run to the store and get some more. Well I couldn't find them everywhere, so I just got some bags that were the same color. They worked just fine for us until we were taking out the trash and a very irate Korean woman made it very clear to us that we could not throw the trash away in that type of bag. We easily solved that problem by taking the trash out late at night when no one is around to see that we don't have the right type of bag.