Travellin' Pack O' Whiteys

So, I got a haircut on Saturday. I've determined that I live in Hair Salon Central, so it was quite easy for me to find a place. The first place I walked by had way too many people in it, so I meandered a bit until I found a less crowded place. Hopefully it also didn't mean that it was a crappy place, but I thought I'd take my chances. So I walk in, look at the first person I see standing there, and motion "cut" with my hands. That lady didn't work there. But she did point me to a lady that did. I only wanted my hair trimmed...I didn't want to walk out of there with some wacky hairdo. I held up the ends of my hair and made an "icky" face. The lady then said something to me in Korean. I have no idea what. I made an "I don't understand" motion. She then repeated the same phrase as before, to which I then decided just to say "Ne" to (yes). Whatever. But then she held up my hair at a certain point to "ask" if that's about where I wanted it cut and I nodded. We were off. The good thing about getting your hair cut in a different country--not feeling the need to chit chat with your hairdresser. So anyway, she cut it fine, but then went to town styling it. She curled all the ends so I looked really odd, in my opinion. I saw some of my students walking home and I got weird looks from them. Let's just say I won't be styling my hair like that in the near (and probably far) future. But the cut is fine.

Later that day I attended a birthday party for a 13 year old (12 US years old). One of my students invited me to her bday. It was a little awkwards since a bunch of my students were there, but it was kinda nice. I talked with her mom a bit, who speaks fluent Korean, English, and Portuguese. I guess they lived in Portugal for a while. They had really good food there. Chicken wings, these jello-like things, fruit soup, crackers with chocolate, gummy bears, wonton type things, strawberry cake, and cream cheese and chocolate brownies. Plus, we made and ate pizza. Very good. They also had in their house the full Anne of Green Gables book collection in both English and Korean, which made me happy.

Sunday I went to the Thanksgiving Feast with about 20 other people from UW (and a few from elsewhere, including a Canadian). It took about 2 hours to get there and 2 to get back. IT was in a rural area and the kid lives in part of a house on a farm. It was really funny, because about 15 of us traveled there together. It's about a 20 minute walk from the bus terminal in his town to his house. So there was this pack of whiteys herding down the streets. To make it even more amusing, many people brought insruments because they wanted to play music there. 2 people had guitars, one guy had a drum, a girl brought a cello, and another guy had a tambourine. You should have seen the looks and stares we got. This was probably more white people than has EVER been in this town (Jo-am) combined, and here we all were together in one pack. Hilarious. Anyway, it was nice. We had a lot of good food. Mom, I used all the jello you sent for it. I felt kinda bad about that (I wanted to eat it myself!) but everyone seemed pretty happy about the jello. Anyway, here is our menu (from what I can remember): Appetizers: bread with olive oil and pepper, prusciutto wrapped persimmon (or something), orange slices with cinnamon, shrimp. Main Course: turkey, mashed potatoes (but no gravy), stuffing, kimchi stuffing, jello, asparagus and cream of mushroom dish, chili, spaghetti, and baked beans. Dessert: sweet potato pie and apple crisp. I was really full after eating. We also had a bunch of wine that was gone before we even started eating. We didn't have a table to hold the food dishes, so we just had to line everything up on the ground outside. Not your typical Thanksgiving Dinner setup, but it sufficed. We also didn't have plates because the store in his town only sold paper bowls. But there's a picture of my bowl. Which looks kind of gross, in part because the green asparagus mushroom thing is on top. And, of course, my jello is on the bottom. Mmm.