Postscript

I forgot to mention that one of my classes, the one that used to pretend I was pregnant, has been pretending I'm a different teacher since I changed my hair. They maintain that Alia-teacher is on vacation and my name is Shelacongshasalasa. Or is it Shelacongsashalasa? It's kind of hard to keep straight; even the kids sometimes say it wrong.

I'm currently uploading all my pictures and videos from the Taehwa River Festival and the World Cup events I went to, but I have to go to bed early tonight. I'll have some stuff up later this week.

Finally, a Decent Haircut

You saw the result of my last haircut, which was horrendous. This time I decided to take it up a notch and go to the posh hair salon by the movie theatre, where you get a free drink and can use the internet and stuff there. It costs 25k won, as opposed to the standard 10k, but even the higher price is about the lowest price I'd pay back home, so it was worth it.

I dyed my hair black the day before and brought in my pictures of Ashley Greene again as a guide. The guy cutting my hair got the length right this time, but again, the outward flipping of the hair threw the chick styling it for a loop. She also went at it with a barrel brush, but unlike the first girl, did not smarten up and use a flatiron. The result was even more horrendous than previously. I looked like the Mad Hatter without a hat. I wish I'd gotten a picture, but I had a ticket to see a movie shortly after the cut, and I spent the next three hours before I got home smoothing it down so I wouldn't be mortified to be in public. I was glad to be in the dark for a while.

Here's what it looks like when I style it myself. It takes about ten minutes, while the stylist took like 30-40 minutes doing it the hard way.



They dye was blue-black, but I've now realized that my hair is so resistant to dye now that even the black starts to fade after a short time, so it's more like brown-black now.

Anyway, I think I gave like 80 people half a heart attack when I went to work on Monday. Koreans don't seem to change their styles all that much. Pretty much the only thing they do to their haircolor is get it bleached to a reddish brown, and I don't think they often do drastic length changes. Also, Koreans overreact a lot, I think. So I heard pretty much everyone in the school gasp hugely, put a hand to a chest or face, and make some shocked remark about how my hair is black and short. The first student who walked into my class didn't even realize it was me in there. She walked in, saw black hair, then turned around and walked out. I had to get her and show her my face.

As always with kids, I got mixed reviews. I think all the adults who vocalized their judgment approved, but some of the kids shouted "Terrible!" and other similar things at me. One teacher and one student said I looked like a witch, which was true. I dressed goth that day. In conclusion, I am now pleased with my head. The End.

Children's Day/Teachers' Day

There are a number of days celebrating groups of people in May, including Children's Day on May 5th and Teachers' Day on the 15th. Children's Day is a national holiday, so we get the day off. Not so with Teachers' Day. We had a party on the 4th for the kids. Last year I got them all little gifts to butter them up for Teachers' Day, and I got quite a few gifts then, and the year before, when I just had generous students (or rather, students with generous mothers).

This year I totally forgot about my own holiday, but luckily I was feeling nice and got them all little gifts anyway. I bought a huge supply of Simpsons mechanical pencils and pens, along with stickers and little notebooks and such. Not one kid, not a single kid, even the good ones, said thank you. Unbelievable. I even shouted "You're welcome" to one class as they left, but those little bastards just filed out as usual, ignoring me. I think it might be because I let them choose their gifts this year. Last year I gave each kid a different gift with a name tag on it (which of course made them all dislike their gifts and want to trade in for another one). I figured if I got more than I needed this year and let them choose, most kids would end up with something they liked. But instead of being grateful for the choice, they just concentrated on fighting over who chose first and who got what someone else wanted, as kids are wont to do. The whole experience was not worth my forty bucks.

Wendy, Louie, Flora


Normally I wouldn't include a picture in which two of the three kids were looking away, but Louie looks so comically haggard.


Becky, Sarah (asker of infinite questions), Sherry, Julie, Helen, Daniel


and John. John's really funny, but he can't speak English for shit, even compared to the low level English the others speak.




Major, Alex, Carlo, Julie, Amy


Olivia, Edwin



Chris (in the back, looks just like Asian Toby Maguire), Alex, Corey (back), Steven



Jane, Kelly


James, I think that's Leo back there, Chris, Alex


My gifts did not improve my gift-gettery for Teachers' Day. It was a pretty abysmal catch, actually. Even some of my students who have given me gifts at every occasion didn't get me anything. But I did get a few nice things.

One of the Alexes got me a skin care kit, Julie got me some chocolates, Andrew's mom brought in ice cream sandwiches for the class and gave me a carnation candle, Daniel's mom made me a carnation pen (carnations are the traditional gift for this holiday), and Danny's mom (always reliable for a good gift) sent over a box of three roll cakes. I'm actually cursing the roll cakes, though. I'm trying to lower my sugar intake, so cake is about the last thing I need. I brought one of them in to work to share with everyone, and I might bring another. I'm slowly working through the first one on my own.

Taiwan

Well, I didn't make it to Taiwan, as I was supposed to do this long weekend. I was so busy planning for other things, like my student aid for school, student visa, and my next vacation, that finding transportation to the airport kind of got put on the back burner.

My initial plan was to get a bus right to the airport, but apparently only one bus goes from Ulsan in the morning, and it was already full, probably had been for a few days. My second option was to take a bus to the Seoul Express Bus Terminal, then take the subway, or if I really needed to hurry, a taxi to the airport. But with Buddha's birthday traffic, the trip took six hours, and I didn't get to Seoul until an hour before my flight. I had estimated the subway trip to be about 90 minutes, and a taxi ride probably close to an hour with traffic. So I had to go to a PC room to contact the hotel on Skype. I got charged for a full night for canceling the day of. I won't know what's going to happen with my flight payment until tomorrow when the travel agency opens. I'm hoping I can just reschedule the flight and go for a slightly longer trip in August, after my contract ends.

Anyway, a friend of mine was hanging out in Seoul, so I saw him for a while, and we had some Japanese pub food and chicken on a stick. Later I found a cheapish motel for the night, and went shopping the next day before heading home. I went to Insadong and saw a bunch of art exhibits and looked at/bought traditional Korean stuff. Then I hopped on the subway to get to the bus station and head home. A rain that has been forecast to last at least ten days started just as I got on the bus. Today I saw How to Train Your Dragon in 3D. So it was a pretty decent weekend, except for incurring fees.


Here are pictures from one of the exhibits. I felt weird taking pictures of people's paintings, but other people were taking pictures of these shoes, so I figured I'd share. Here's the website:

http://www.ibluedot.co.kr/1/index.asp














On my way out, a parade was beginning, as part of the Traditional Ceremonies Reenactment deal that was going on. There were some tea ceremony setups, too, but I didn't see those.