Well it was a long time coming, and those Christmas party pictures showed a lot of dead ends, so I decided to bite the bullet and go to a Korean hair salon. If there were not salons every block in my neighborhood, I might have traveled to Itaewon (the neighborhood around the USA Army base...needless to say it's where a lot of foreigners gather, and very few Koreans) but it's not my favorite area of Seoul so I try to stay away from it. Plus, I'm pretty easy going with my hair (remember the shades of red and black?) so I thought it would be an interesting cultural experience. Which it defintely was.
First of all, the guy spoke no English, so we were communicating entirely through hand gestures. My main goal was no bangs. Korean men and women really like their bangs. I was adamant on that point and that point alone, pointing to pictures of girls and women around my chair that had very blunt bangs and just shook my head and crossed my arms in the universal sign of "No." He definitely got it. First he started out with cutting my hair when it was dry. Definitely not how we do it at Salon Russo. He was pretty fun to watch. He would walk in 180 degree turns around my chair analyzing my head in deep thought and then he'd just drop to his knees, in an exaggerated I'm going to ask you to marry me pose, and start snipping. And snip, and snip, and snip. And snip.
I was kinda worried I was gonna get another of those disastorous pixie cuts but it turns out he was mostly thinning it. I swear half of my hair got cut off my head in those first few minutes before he reached for another of his instruments to actually cut the length of my hair. Aside from eliminating about 98% of my layers, I was fine with the cut. It ages me a few years, but I can still pull it back and I've always though short pony tails were cute. The next fun part came when he washed it-
after the cut. As soon as my hair got wet he started doing all sorts of odd motions with it, like karate chopping it with his hands and rubbing it in between his hands really, really fast, as if they were pieces of flint and he was trying to start a fire. I didn't understand it at all but I was getting a really, really nice head massage but him at the same time so I didn't try to look up and see what he was doing. Maybe my hair was being rude and needed to get put in its place. I don' t know which but as soon as he started hair drying it in curls I was so fascinated by what he was doing. He basically divided my hair into five sections and curled all those sections around his fingers so they formed a single curl. I looked like an Hasidic Jew. It was the funniest thing I saw last night.
Well, the whole experience cost about 12,000.00 won, which is less thant $9. As soon as I left the salon I threw my hair up in a pony tail and scurried home, to analyze the damage. It's definitely not the chicest cut I've ever gotten, but it's far from the horribly Korean haircut I was warned it would be by teachers who prefer to travel two hours to get white people to do it. It was also the perfect cap to a very odd day- seeing as yesterday was Drama Festival. But I can only write about one odd Korean experience at a time, so I'll have to write about that later!
I thought I'd post an entry on the day you all celebrate Christmas. Christmas is not too big of a deal here in Korea, and here are some pictures I took of random objects that people turned into Christmas decorations. It doesn't really make much sense but, hey, that's Korea for you.
We all got together to have a White Elephant (or Yankee Swap if you're Canadian) Christmas Exchange. I stole these pictures from our hostesses facebook profile :)
I was quite excited when opening my gift from Breanne, I hold many a memory weaving neon colored pot holders with this loom.
The awesome Kongrish box I brought (each side had an English phrase that made no sense) to the party, it was the first one to go via Kyle.
Krystal, Breanne, and Jocelyn in their ugly Christmas sweaters.
Korean apartments are small, so we were all sitting in the kitchen.
My full present, including a cd of Rain- the Korean equivalent of Justin Timerlake.
An exponentially better gift than the foldable spoon and twisty ties that Nermin got.
Can you imagine a high rise in a major metropolitan city in the US having a cartoon fish painted on the side of it?
Can't decide whether you want a latter or a lager? Well come over here, you can have both!
This car garage is apparently a Presbyterian church.
Asian mannequins (I say Asian rather than Korean because this style of animation is very Asian) Notice how big their heads are? I was very surprised to see how many large noggins there are in Korea. The Reddy's fit right in.
I've been here only once...
This looks crowded, but after seeing other parts of Seoul I've come to see how nice and quiet my neighborhood is. In other parts of Seoul a street on a Saturday morning would be, literally, jam packed with people, shoulder to shoulder.
Lots of lanes on South Korean streets.
It's official- Andrew Lloyd Webber is everywhere. Cats is annoying even when I know what the words are, I have no idea (nor any desire) to see how it sounds in Korean.
