Clip-On Bangs and Concert Tix

Today was a fairly standard day... five classes, cold weather, Morning English, kimchi and rice lunch...

Speaking of kimchi for lunch, yesterday, literally 3/5 of our lunch consisted of kimchi.  There was standard cabbage kimchi, a cucumber salad that had been "kimchied" which means it was soaked in the same spicy sauce as kimchi and a kimchi soup along with the normal rice and a thick beef stew-like gravy (which I enjoyed...so weird).  There were persimmons for dessert, though I didn't have time to eat mine because we had to hurry through lunch to go take yearbook photos (more those later)!  It was Wednesday, which means best lunch of the week day, and Koreans LOVE their kimchi, so for them, it was a glorious meal!  I eat kimchi every single day at lunch and without fail at most restaurants and I'm still enjoying it, which is good because apparently, it's SUPER healthy. Koreans swear up and down that they were not affected by the SARS outbreak because they eat so much kimchi.

For the yearbook photo, they took one with all of the teachers together in a big group with the school and some fall colored trees in the background.  I stood in the second to last row on the end.  I was in front of the tallest male teacher and at one point, I heard a couple of the men talking behind me and then I heard the teacher directly behind me say, "Wow."  Then, the photographer brought over one of his equipment boxes and made the teacher stand on it.  He must not be used to having his vision impeded, let alone by a girl!  After the picture was taken, Hyunjoo and I went to my apartment so she could show me how to run the heater.  I thought I had figured it out, but I didn't think it was working or I was hitting a wrong button because I didn't notice a change in the room's temperature.  We got it all figured out and last night, I came home to a toasty floored apartment!  All of the heating in Korea is done through heat coils in the floor.  It is sooo cozy!

I got my phone and internet bill yesterday.  Hyunjoo showed me that I could pay them (21,000 won altogether) at the convenience store below my apartment!  It seems so weird to me that I can give a convenience store money and my bills are taken care of.  It's soooo convenient though, so I'm certainly not complaining!

Today in Morning English, Chan Yang asked me to explain Halloween.  Prior to the start of our broadcast, he asked me when Americans trick or treat.  I told him that it usually happens on Halloween night, but sometimes trick or treating happens the day before or after depending on the circumstances.  (I seemed to remember not trick or treating on Sundays, but I could be making that up...)  Then, he asked if I was sure because he heard that we never trick or treat on Halloween anymore because of 9/11 and terrorists attacking cities and killing millions of children.  Hmmm...

A few weeks ago, I heard a cute story.  There is some sort of flower here that used to be used to stain finger nails in the same fashion that we use nail polish.  The pigment is so strong that it literally stains the nail.  The only way to remove it is the let the nail grow out.  There is a sort of folklore legend that school age girls observe that says when they use that flower pigment to stain their fingernails, they will find their true love before the color disappears from nail growth.  I had forgotten about that story until the last couple of days when I've noticed that about half of my students are sporting a curious dull orange color on their fingernails that are half grown out.  I asked some of the students about it today and they were excited that I knew the legend and offered to stain my nails for me next year!

One of my classes was literally like babysitting today.  I was talking to three girls who were sitting in the front row and all was well.  They taught me some nonsensical Korean kid's game and talked about funny stuff (like how one of them wants to be a policeWOMAN (she made a real big deal about this) because they wear a cool uniform), but the second I would go over to help other students, the girls literally tackled each other to the floor or hit each other.  It was nuts.  I finally made one of them move to another seat, but not without giving her the big eyes.  They must know that when my eyes get big, I mean business.  They were just fine once they moved.

This morning, a teacher gave me a steamed sweet potato.  Unsure of what to do, I began to peel it and eat it.  I wasn't sure what the protocol was for eating a freshly steamed sweet potato, but it sure was yummy!  I don't know what it is about Korean sweet potatoes.  Maybe they are laced with crack because I eat them all the time!  I've also grown to love mandarin oranges.  The first mandarin orange I ate just tasted wrong to me (I think I was expecting more of a clementine flavor given their identical size and appearance), but now I LOVE them! 

I walked into the other teachers' office today to talk to Dionne and there was a gaggle of girls and a teacher surrounding a mirror behind the door.  I discovered they were giving a girl advice about whether or not she should get bangs.  How did they know if it was a good idea?  They had clip-on hair that was cut like Korean school girl bangs that attached to the existing hair with metal hair clips.  Of course, they insisted that I try them on (imagine my pixie cut with full, past the eyebrow jet black bangs!) and then told me I looked really nice with black hair.  I told them the infamous "Noelle dyes her hair black" story and we all agreed I should stick with my natural color.  Rest assure...no crazy hair changes for this kid anytime soon (unless I screw up my haircut...but that won't be by choice :) )

Diane and I just bought  tickets to a sweet K-Pop concert in December!  Apparently, (I'm not well versed in K-Pop, but Diane is an avid fan, so she knows the good stuff...) this concert is going to be huge.  All of the popular groups from the YG record label will be performing at this show.  This label hasn't held such a concert in something like three years, so we're lucky we even got tickets because of popular this show will be!  I know a couple of songs from a couple of artists,(and Diane just gave me a whole bunch of the music) but this is sure to be one of the most Korean things I will do during my time here!  Koreans love their K-Pop and I'm sure I'll grow to love it too!  It's real catchy, that's for sure!

Yesterday marked my two month anniversary in Korea!  I cannot believe how quickly these last two months have passed!  I feel like I've learned a lot and grown, too, in many ways.  This is shaping up to be a great experience and it will only get better as I become more and more comfortable.