The Adventures of Haircuts and Noribangs!

Last weekend was my first experience at getting a haircut in Korea. Wow, what a production! I went with my friend Maria and we were really nervous about the whole deal. I hadn't gotten my haircut in a really long time as I just finished taking my dreads. We walked around the downtown of Gwangju for about an hour running in and out of hair salons. Our way of judging whether we thought it would be a good place was based merely on aesthetics and vibes. We finally settled on a cute one with lots of hairdressers and people. Maria went first, I almost died laughing! She has super curly hair, and in Korea that's just not normal. So at first they just went at her head with a comb (after just a few sprays of water) and then went wild with the scissors for about two minutes. Once they had cut a decent amount of her hair they got the straighteners out and started straightening like mad. After about 45 minutes of 4 different people straightening and cutting her hair we weren't sure what it would look like once it was curly! My haircut was a lot less eventful then Maria's I only had two people working on my hair and it went fairly smoothly. Although, at one point I thought she was going to give me bangs, that was a little scary! Once we were finished we were both a little shaken up by the whole process because in the end Maria had about 6 people staring at her while 2 others straightened. Maria loves her new haircut and I'm still a little unsure however it was worth the experience. It's so wild how the language barrier can turn a normal day-to-day situation into a wild adventure.

With our fresh haircuts we then proceeded to 80-FY ourselves for an 1980's theme Birthday party! It was sooo easy to turn some normal clothes into eighties wear (I think it's because we are both children of the eighties so it's in our blood). A couple hours into the party the birthday girl decided that she wanted to go a Noribang (Karaoke). I was pretty excited about this as I had heard so many good stories about these singing rooms. About ten of geared up in our eighties wear headed to the Noribang. If you see the pictures it gives a good depiction of the fantastic time we had. Basically you rent out small rooms and get your own personal Karaoke sound system plus you can bring in your own drinks and food. It was a hilariously funny night!