Gloves, gloves, gloves...

When walking through the woods, down a city street, or on the beach, the number one type of item we find laying around is...gloves.  Cotton ones, usually.  Sometimes they lay alone, and sometimes they seem to gather in loose-knit communities.  Here are just a few examples from recent hikes in the woods:

And this collection I made from a small area of the beach on the East Sea (what we would call the Sea of Japan).

Why all the gloves? We asked Nick's teaching assistant and he saw nothing strange - don't Americans also use gloves for working, gardening, washing dishes, cleaning?  Nope - not at this crazy rate, anyway.  But we sure do use them in HOSPITALS, like when removing warts from someone's FEET.  Ah, what a funny place.