Anyeong!
This post is brought to you by Minnie's nephew
After facing torment this week from my student about my hair, I decided to get a haircut. I went to the place Joon took me when I first got my haircut, but the girl who cut it wasn't there. I waited for my turn, passing the time reading Slaughterhouse 5. When it was my turn, I followed some guy who washed my hair and went to the chair. I wish I could take a picture of the hairdressers. Unlike at home where they have their own stations, these hairdressers are mobile. They wear a tool belt with all the things they need, including a spray bottle of water. Its amazing how quickly they grab scissors and combs and clips out of their belt and put them away! The first thing she asked me was if I spoke Korean, which I don't. So I mimicked what I wanted and she said ohh David Beckham? I have no idea what his hair looks like, but I just smiled and nodded. She started cutting my hair and her minion (the guy who washed my hair) stood behind her. After she cut the back, her minion held this plastic shield thing over my face so the cut hair wouldn't fall on my face. It made me extremely uncomfortable but I didn't know how to tell her I don't want that. I looked around and no one else had it on. I felt like a dog who just got his manhood cut off and has to wear that plastic cone. I was reduced to staring at the guy's well manicured hands for 20 minutes. She cut my hair pretty short, and when it started to dry my callick (cowlick? calic?) started coming out in full force. Now, it became immediately obvious that she has never seen one before (asian people have really thick hair and wear it long so it just hangs straight down), and I'm not sure mine is the first one you want to see in your professional career as a hair designer. She started freaking out. She kept trying to flatten it and cut more off of it. When these failed, she called over all the other hair designers, who were busy with their clients, to come scope out my hair. For a good 5 minutes, I was surrounded by them. They were staring at me and talking in Korean about what I could only guess is what to do with it. I think she thought she made a mistake. In my best sign language / little kid English I tried to tell her it was okay with a bunch of smiles and thumbs ups. She eventually got over it. The first girl gave me a better haircut, but I couldn't hate on this girl. She did well for dealing with her first callick.
On Sunday I went back to the ice fishing festival... it was something to do. This time in tow was Ben, Tyler, Cecily, Emily, Greg, Andrew, Mollie, Donnie, and Ben's two friends Kay and Yeonhee. I hope I got everyone, if I left you out I'm sorry. This time I only caught one fish, but this time I hooked it in the middle of its body. I don't know how these things keep happening. Instead of new crews this time there was a load of photographers. Cecily caught a fish and they swarmed her and took a ton of pictures of her and her fish. Greg caught a lot of fish and I made the unfortunate mistake of trying to fish next to him. When he caught his second fish the swarm of Korean photographers were upon him in record time. They dragged me over to his hole, took one of his fish, stuck it on my hook, and made us both squat over the hole with our fish while they took many pictures of us. After the fiasco ended, I took the road less traveled by and fished as far away from everyone as I could.
Me with my new hat Nancy got me from Finland and my fly swatter / fishing rod.
I never felt more welcome.. the foreign area was deserted and the Korean area was packed.
Cecily, Mollie, and Andrew signed up for the "bare-handed fishing" at 3:30. I don't know what part of swimming around sub freezing water, in sub freezing outside temperatures, catching sub freezing fish and putting them in your shirt sounded like a good idea.. but somehow they did.
The Battle Arena
Cecily's game face
A few select Koreans and all foreigners got called to the middle of the pool. Notice Andrew in the back, already freezing cold. Also, notice the guy by the stairs, he's important later.
They all had to join hands and fall over backwards in the freezing water. Price for doing this: 1 free fish. Notice Andrew and Mollie, the only 2 standing. Cecily, in true Cecily fashion, was the first one to take the dive.
And so it begins.. this wasn't the Korean's first rodeo, so they all went to the edges and caught the fish, leaving the foreigners stranded in the middle cold and hungry. Their shirts were tucked in because when they caught a fish, they put it in their shirt, like the guy to the far right, under the kid in the baby blue. Notice Andrew, lost, shirt untucked, hypothermic.. He was the most entertaining to watch. Theres the guy with the waders on. He was carrying around one of those deep fryer metal basket things.. helping those in need by giving them fish. He gave Cecily one, she held it up for us with a big smile, and it fell out of her hands. She tracked him down, he caught her another fish, and the same thing happened. She tracked him down one more time, he gave her a fish, and she immediately put it in her shirt.. so she can learn... Where is Waldo, anyway?
There she is. Freezing cold and fishless.
All the smart dry people started cooking their fish. The Korean girl on the left is Yeonhee and the one on the right is Kay. Andrew is in the hat with the pom pom on the left, Tyler in the red hood, Ben in the blue hat, and Donnie in the black and grey hat. I don't really know Donnie's story, but I think he works at a public school.
Tyler, in true Cajun Louisianian fashion, ate almost every part of the fish. When someone joked about eating the eyeball, he was already 3 eyeballs deep. Here is him eating the liver and the intestines, which, unfortunately for him, still had some fish poop in them.
The fruits of our labors. Eating this fish one time was more than enough for me, so this time I acted as official photographer.
While we were leaving we came across an ice tunnel!
One day this week it snowed so much! I was so happy. We got like 3-5 inches or something. I stayed in my apartment, watched tv, and generally enjoyed the snowfall.
About an hour into it, you couldn't see anything! It was almost like I wasn't in a city.. almost..
Stories from Mario Teacher's classroom this week:
On Wednesday, I was so happy to walk into the girl who made fun of my hair's class and show off my new haircut. I told her I got it cut just for her. I don't think she appreciated it much, because she told me my five o'clock shadow was ugly. Girls are never satisfied.
After I left her class I went to her friends class, which is also full of witty girls. When I first walked in, one girl said something in Korean. Her friend told me that it was disrespectful, something you say to your friends and not teachers. The girl said it was okay, because we were *something*.. I'm not sure what the word was because it was Korean, so I told her to look it up in her dictionary. When she found the definition, it said "intimate"... I almost died. I told her intimate was what her parents were, not us. So she said the next word in the definition, "familiar". I told her to stick with that one.
My face always gets read in front of classrooms, partly because the Korean teachers make them saunas, and partly because I don't like to be in front of people. Anyway, the girl who came up with the whole "apple tree" nickname last week told me that now I look like Elmo. She's so kind. I called her Choji, which is the really fat kid who eats constantly in Naruto. I got a few chuckles.. and from that bonding moment I knew who the cool kids in class were.
Today I went to Starbucks to do my lesson plans. On my way home, I figured I'd stop at Lotte Department Store to buy some kimchi and some other food. The kimchi you buy in bags is pretty gross, so you have to go to department stores to get good kimchi. I was browsing the kimchi selections when an ajjuma blind sided me and barraged me with Korean. I walked away and grabbed the other stuff I needed. I made the mistake of going back to the kimchi place, but I really wanted some. She found me again and made me sample some of the kimchi. It wasn't my favorite, but I told her it was good. What i really wanted was the other kimchi. But she gave me no choice. As soon as I told her it was good, my fate was sealed. She took all the stuff out of my hands and put it in a plastic bag for me. She also threw in $8 worth of the kimchi that I sampled and ran away. I too shocked to understand where she made the connection that I even wanted kimchi in the first place, let alone that kimchi and that much of it, but she was so aggressive that I ended up buying it.
After that I stumbled upon the wine sale. Just like the kimchi lady, this place was swarming with overly excited ajjumas. The wine sale took up a total of a ten square foot area, but had 15 ajjumas standing around. When you walked around, an ajjuma followed you. If you spent more than 2 seconds looking at a bottle, not even touching it, just looking at it, she would pick it up and say in Korean "This tastes good!" and a whole bunch of other Korean that I didn't understand. When this happened I just hurried away as fast as I could before I got stuck with buying more things I didn't want. Unfortunately, when I left one ajjuma's jurisdiction, another one was there to great me immediately, and did the same thing. I ended up circling the wine sale like they were the walls of Jericho, swiftly grabbing the bottles I wanted and running to the next jurisdiction. Good news: I made it out alive.
No comments:
Post a Comment