Straight hair

Just over a week ago, Saturday before last, I got my hair permed straight.

This is something I've thought about doing for a few years, but I was always afraid to actually try it. I had heard negative stories about people having their hair ruined, or having to spend an hour on their hair every day before they could dare go out in public, etc, etc.

But I went to get my hair trimmed a couple of weeks ago and therein lie the catalyst which caused me to finally take the plunge.

The hair salon I went to was great. It looked really upscale - I was impressed just sitting in the waiting room.
They served cappuccinos, smoothies, and other assorted beverages.
The traditional pre-haircut-shampoo included a scalp massage.

But when the time came to actually cut my hair, I was simultaneously amused and annoyed.
I said that I just wanted a trim.
As the stylist began working on my hair, he commented that my hair was really curly. He seemed a bit mystified at how curly my hair was and noted that the texture was unusual - he said that it seemed like permed hair. I thought this was kind of funny and chalked it up to the fact that I was in Asia. I figured the guy had never actually seen naturally curly hair.

But then he asked me if I had a straightener, I replied that I didn't.

His response?

"Oh, you should get one."

"You need one."

I had been thinking about asking him to blow it out straight for me - I frequently do this when I get a trim. But I didn't. I didn't have to. He just straightened it. Because how else would I wear it?

He also asked me if I had thought about straightening it. I told him that I had, and asked him how much it cost. He wasn't sure how to say the amount in English, so he told me in Korean. I was still working on figuring out the counting system and thought he had said it was $150 (actually, 150,000 KRW). But my friend told me that she had heard that you could get a perm in Korea for $30, so I started wondering if he had been saying that it was $15. That seemed ridiculously cheap to me, but it's always surprising how prices vary in foreign countries.*

So I started thinking that at that price, I would go back the following Saturday and get my hair permed. But when I got to work, I told a friend how much they said it would cost, and she confirmed that it was $150 :(

So I was sad. Because at that point, I had gotten all excited about getting it straightened.

But then she said that there was a place I could go in Seoul to get it done for cheap. And she was thinking of getting her hair cut the following weekend. So we went together!

This is my friend Emma (actually, her name is Min Jong, but Emma is her English name - I use both names :) ) She took me to this salon to get my hair straightened. It cost under $40!

I haven't had too many pictures of myself taken in the last week, and consequently don't have a lot of pics of me with straight hair - but a few of us went out after work on Wednesday, and I have some photos from that. I don't know what everyone else's reasons were for going out, but I was celebrating my recent acquisition of internet. And by "recent," I mean it was connected that day while I was at work, and I went home to internet for the first time.


Not the best shot ever, but you can see my straight hair, and that's the point, right?


I like this shot (except for the fact that Jess is a bit distracted) because I'm eating french fries with chopsticks. Only in Korea, right? But here's a random fun fact: Koreans eat rice with a spoon, not chopsticks.

So that's it for now. Expect more pics of me with straight hair in the future.

Because there will be more pics of me.

And my hair is straight now.

* I typically spend $4-$5 on dinner out, but it costs me $2 for a quart of milk

We interrupt this silence to bring you -an update!

I HAVE INTERNET! HOORAY! I got it on Wednesday, at which point I made the comment that I felt like I had just won the lottery. I realize that seems a little bit ridiculous, but I think the last time I lived without internet (at home - I did still have access at work) for 6 weeks, was when it didn’t exist. Unless you count the time a few years ago when I spent 2 weeks hiking in Spain, 2 weeks traveling in Morocco, a week in London, then a week in Ireland. But I was traveling - plus there was a day in Madrid and a week in London where I had internet access at the place where I was staying. So, yeah...

Ok, so now I feel like a spoiled brat.

Umm.. I’m just really happy and thankful to have internet at home. I realize that there are millions of people in the world that have much bigger things to worry about and home internet access isn’t actually vital for life - but I’m happy to have it. K?

So anyway, I’ve been pretty busy with work, but Wednesday and Thursday nights I stayed up way too late taking advantage of my internet access. I had lofty ambitions for what I would do within the first 24 hours of gaining home internet access: Skype every single one of my friends, post 27 blogs, catch up on all of the news for the last 6 weeks from my 3 favorite online news sources, etc.

So what did I do?

Randomly surfed the net. Tried to find an online tv schedule for South Korea. Researched training schedules for runners.

Hey - that last thing at least seems beneficial, right? But the week before last I ran 6 days out of 7. Haven’t run since I got internet... ouch.

Then Friday night, I came home and went to bed soon after. It was a long week, and my school had an all-day workshop thingy on Saturday. But Saturday morning (yesterday), I woke up with a fever and a stomachache, so I slept pretty much all day - didn’t even use the internet. Then today, I slept about half the day and am feeling 100% better now. I guess it was just a 24-hr bug.

Speaking of being sick, this is the second time I’ve had a stomach bug since I’ve been here, in addition to the worst cold ever, which lasted about 3 weeks (I actually think that I got a second cold about a week after I got the first one - I had felt like I was starting to get better, then BOOM - it hit me. I actually went to the doctor. This was the first time in my life that I went to the doctor for what I believed to be a cold). Anyway, hopefully now that I’ve adjusted to living here, I won’t keep getting sick.

But I digress. Repeatedly.

I’ve managed to catch up on some of my blog reading and decided that it was way past time I blogged.
The problem with going 6 weeks without blogging - especially during the course of something eventful, like..oh... moving to a foreign country - is that it’s difficult to know where to start.

Consequently, I decided to just jump on in there and ramble.

I think I'm going to shoot for a basic overview of what my life is like in the ROK (Republic of Korea - not to be confused with North Korea). If you want to know more about any particular aspect, just leave a comment.

The teaching is going pretty well. It was a bit nerve-wracking the first couple of days. I taught my first class the day after I got here. I had less than 2 hours of training and wasn't even able to observe a class before I started teaching. By the end of the week, though, I was pretty comfortable with it. The curriculum requires very minimal preparation - so that helps. I work with about a dozen other foreign teachers and a dozen Korean teachers. Out of the foreign teachers, one is Australian, two are Brits, and the rest are about evenly divided between Canucks and Yanks. They're all pretty cool.

My apartment is pretty cool, too. It's very small, but I do actually have a bedroom, so that's nice. Most teacher apartments are studios. The commute isn't bad, either. I just have to cross the street :) My church is a bit farther away, though. I have to cross the street, then turn right and cross the street again. It's a really cool church, though, so I don't mind going the extra distance. It's called Global English Ministry, and they have English services every Sunday morning. I like the worship, too - we sang Days of Elijah a couple of weeks ago, though - that threw me for a loop. Anyone who was in MC from '99-'00 knows what I'm talking about....

The food is awesome, too. I like it a lot more than I thought I would - not that I thought I would dislike it, but I was a little afraid of kimchi and wasn't sure what to expect from the rest of Korean cuisine. It's good stuff. Me likey. There's about a bazillion types of kimchi, I like some of them, but some are downright weird. My favorites are kimbap, bibimbap, and jajangmyeon. Oh! And curry. Curry donkasu.

I have so much more to say - it's probably going to be a while until I get you up to speed after 6 weeks of silence. But it's 1:30 am here and I want to go for a run tomorrow morning before work. I've been running by a river about 10 minutes from my house. There's a path alongside it which even has the distance in kilometers marked on the ground. I've been talking with a couple of friends about running a 10k in a month or so. Fun times.

But anyway, that's pretty much my life in a nutshell.

Oh - and a week ago, I got my hair permed straight.

Ahhh, before I go, let me leave you with one food pic:

curry donkasu - pork cutlets with curry sauce and riceYummy