Yesterday was a day of sightseeing and doing traditional Seoul activities. We went to Apgujeong again, the young and hip shopping district of Seoul. Sungah bought some clothes and I went to a big hair salon to get a straight perm.
I really liked how my perm turned out; it'll be so nice not having to worry about poofy hair when it gets humid. The entire process took about 2 1/2 hours, and it was rather difficult with the language barrier and all. Sungah helped at first, but there's a lot of stuff that can be said with just hand gestures too. I wasn't sure what was going on the whole time though. I understood the putting chemicals in my hair and letting it sit, and then washing my hair and straightening it. But after that my stylist put some sort of weird soapy mixture in my hair and wrapped it in toiletpaper. Then I got it washed, dried, and straightened again. The stylist told me that caucasian hair is a lot finer and thinner than asian hair so he had to be really careful not to damage it. I think it turned out fine though. And the entire process, which would have cost probably over $100 in America, came out to roughly 23 bucks. Good deal, no?
After that we met up with some of Sungah's guy friends at the noraebang (karaoke room). One of them lived in Australia for awhile, so he wanted to talk to me in English. I'm getting pretty good at picking things up though, so I could understand most of what they said to each other. We sang a lot of the standard noraebang songs. They were all really good, and I couldn't keep a pitch at all. Really embarrassing... But as long as I tried they were happy. My textbook taught me that it's more disrespectful to not sing than to sing poorly.
I really liked how my perm turned out; it'll be so nice not having to worry about poofy hair when it gets humid. The entire process took about 2 1/2 hours, and it was rather difficult with the language barrier and all. Sungah helped at first, but there's a lot of stuff that can be said with just hand gestures too. I wasn't sure what was going on the whole time though. I understood the putting chemicals in my hair and letting it sit, and then washing my hair and straightening it. But after that my stylist put some sort of weird soapy mixture in my hair and wrapped it in toiletpaper. Then I got it washed, dried, and straightened again. The stylist told me that caucasian hair is a lot finer and thinner than asian hair so he had to be really careful not to damage it. I think it turned out fine though. And the entire process, which would have cost probably over $100 in America, came out to roughly 23 bucks. Good deal, no?
After that we met up with some of Sungah's guy friends at the noraebang (karaoke room). One of them lived in Australia for awhile, so he wanted to talk to me in English. I'm getting pretty good at picking things up though, so I could understand most of what they said to each other. We sang a lot of the standard noraebang songs. They were all really good, and I couldn't keep a pitch at all. Really embarrassing... But as long as I tried they were happy. My textbook taught me that it's more disrespectful to not sing than to sing poorly.
We soon left and took the bus across the Han River to some part of Seoul I've never been to before. We met another friend of Sungah's (a girl this time) and got some food. I thought I'd already tried pretty much every kind of Korean food, but they still had more surprises. This was some sort of deep fried meat in spicey sauce and a different kind of meat that we dipped in salt powder. I'm not much of a meat eater, and it was especially difficult eating this because I had no idea what animal it's from, or where on the animal. They said one was some sort of finger... Needless to say, I didn't have much of an appetite at that meal.
Then we went to a billiard room, but their pool is completely different. It took me awhile to learn, especially because Sungah's friend explained the whole thing to me in Korean. Each player gets a ball, and then there are two same colored balls on the table. The objective is to hit both balls on the table with your ball. Needless to say, it required a lot of angles and positioning. I failed miserably. :-( There was this other guy there who kept trying to translate into English for me, but he only knew simple words like "left", "right", and "good job" which I already know in Korean anyways. Then he tried to give me his phone number as a "Korea present." He was kind of odd.
Oh, I forgot to mention that I also visited a middle school and elem school. They looked just like the scary movies! I kept expecting a ghost to jump down the long hallway... The elementary students were really cute. They were all cleaning with little mops and brooms when we came in.
1 comment:
Two questions:
First, are you really sure you were eating the fingers of an animal? We have chicken fingers here in the States, but they are just chicken breast cut into strips the size of a finger. Maybe they do the same kind of thing in Korea. It's hard to imagine an animal with edible fingers!
Second, what did all the school children do with their mops? Do they each clean the area around their desk? That must take a total of 2 minutes. It's hard for me to comprehend a whole class of middle schoolers cleaning. What's their secret?
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