My weekly misadventures!

Living overseas before has taken a lot of the shock away that I felt when we first moved to Korea. I’m much more relaxed now and rarely surprised, until this week when a couple of things caught me off guard! First, my visit to the spa! To prepare for the big ball I decided to take advantage of the inexpensive day spas and cheap babysitting to enjoy some time alone being “pampered”. Unfortunately, the spas here are not nearly as relaxing as the ones I’m used to! Getting my nails done was crazy, they had four different people working on me- two for the feet and two for the hands and it really makes you self-conscious to hear them all talking in their own language while they clean your feet. I couldn’t help but imagine the conversation the feet girls were having “Oh, you think that toe is gross? You should see her heels!” or the nail girls, “What are we going to do about these cuticles?” Actually, I really don’t want to know what they said about me because it could not have been good!
Then- my eyebrows- oh my goodness! In Germany they only tweeze so when I had them done in the States for the first time just the wax surprised me (and if you’re lucky they clean it up afterwards!) but here they don’t do either, they “thread”. My mom has seen this before but I’ve never heard of it so if you don’t know what I’m talking about it’s kind of hard to explain. Anyways, I go into the back room preparing to ‘relax’ when this mean (and I mean – mean!) looking woman with what looks like dental floss hanging out of her mouth literally attacked my head with the string! I honestly jumped because I had NO idea what she was doing to me but somehow, they manage to clean up the eyebrows as she harshly finagled this thread around them. It was so weird and a little painful. I was v. afraid to see what the results were and could not believe it when they actually looked quite good (and I’m fussy!) I just wish someone would have warned me!!! Or, at least warned me about how the hair maestro (what we all call them here) does not go to the roots when giving highlights. It is the most annoying thing ever! I guess they refuse all over here because they are so worried about the toxics on your scalp or something. Anyhow, after all that time and $ getting highlights I left still needing them!!! They actually have different people to hold the tin foil, blow dry, shampoo etc. so you leave having to tip at least four people for your haircut, it’s all so dramatic and again, much less relaxing then one might hope.
The other strange thing that happened to us this week is we finally were able to have our carpets and furniture steamcleaned. I’ve been bugging J that we needed to get this done since we moved in and so when we finally got an appointment I thought great- after two months the house will be just as I want it to be. Until, J called to tell me that when they came in the next five minutes they would actually be emptying the house of everything that needed to be cleaned. I was totally shocked! So, now we have no carpets and absolutely no furniture (except beds, two chairs and some tables) until next week. Did I mention that we were supposed to have company staying with us? The worst part was that just when the house felt clean (thank you Jane) they lifted the carpets so now we know how gross it really is!
Okay, my last story of the week (promise) was Wed’s playgroup. The family hosting it lives a few blocks away but I had never met them. So- I walk over only to find that they had a tank (J says it’s really an up-armored Humvee or something) but it looked like a tank to me with someone holding an automatic weapon in their front yard! Turns out, Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President lives right across the street! I guess they see him coming and going all of the time. Obviously, I need to get out in the neighborhood more because I would love to see him! Then, at the playgroup, they had a clown doing all sorts of face painting and balloon tricks. This was really fun except that I’m supposed to host it at my house soon and now I feel like I have to rent a circus or something! I mean, really, who hires a clown for a playgroup?! : )