A close (Korean) scrub in Spa Land

During my lunch break I saw a video of Conan O’Brien going to a Korean Spa for the first time. His over exaggerated reactions in the Spa made me giggle as it reminded me of my first time. The best part of the experience was getting scrubbed from ear to big-toe by a middle-aged Korean lady in black lacy underwear. 

You might be thinking: what are Korean body scrubs? Is the Korean spa/scrub treatment intense? Well, here's my tale...  

After being persuaded my friend Aamena, Kendra (another brave soul) and I dropped our winter clothing and fears. With nothing but a hand towel to hide my bits, we stepped into the wonder that is Shinsegae's Spa Land.


You’ll hear many tales of the amazing baths, saunas and rooms you can relax in, but for me, the Scrubbing Room was the most memorable. 

After entering the public bathing area with Kendra and Aamena, I booked a scrubbing-slot and took my naked self for a soak while waiting my turn to get scrubbed.   

While trying to embrace my complete nudity (and the nudity of those around me), I was finally called for my my first Korean body scrub. I scurried towards the room and was met by a middle-aged woman in her black underwear. She took my little towel and threw it to the side as I whimpered a little and tried to stay focused. She pointed at the bed with a plastic cover and I slowly hopped on.

As I tried to not slip off the already soapy slab, a woman I had chatted to earlier was being scrubbed on the slab next to me. Her eyes were closed, she had a look of calm on her face and all the while another aunty was scrubbing her vigorously. 

I laid on my back, arms tucked close to my bare body and legs firmly closed. I felt like a sheep going in for the slaughter. My eyes darted from the methodical movements of the scrubber at the next bed, to the dimly lit lights above me and before I knew it, my friendly scrubber threw warm water over me. Were the odds going to be in my favour?

Beginning at my face, my scrubber wiped and then applied a face mask. I kept thinking that her belly button was waaaay too close to my face as I could almost see the detail lining her panties! She had seen too many naked souls to bother about my space issues and continued working. Her professional attitude and swift movements started to quieten my anxious mind and before I knew it, I started to enjoy the experience.

From my face, she began to work on my feet and legs. Her hands, hidden in hand-loofas began to scrub the surface of my body. Legs were bent and separated, toes were parted, and my tummy got a good working too. I tried to not pull away from the pressure of each hand as she scrubbed away dead skin cells and any inhibitions I had left. When it came to my bosom, neck and shoulders, I found it hard to stay dead still as this was getting more familiar than a family Christmas lunch. I think I squealed a little each time she threw my arms behind my head to scrub my sides, or when she pulled my legs apart to access the inner thigh. 

After being flipped onto my tummy, the scrubbing lady left the soles of my feet, legs, derriere, back and neck smarting. While my cheek connected with the plastic bed, I noticed small greyish, almost noodle-looking particles on the bed next to me. It then dawned on me: these were my dead skin cells. There’s something disgusting and satisfying about knowing just how clean you are, but knowing exactly how that dirt looks.  

After warm water was tossed over me once again, I was handed a new white towel by my scrubbing-pro and billed 20 000won. I left her feeling pretty proud of myself and feeling oh-so-clean! Click here for more info about Shinsegae's Spa Land, if you pluck up the courage to go! 

Have you been for a Korean body scrub? Was it awkward for you?

Chops and trims in Korea - Busan hairdresser tales

I sat in the chair, worried. I watched my Korean hairdresser in Busan closely via the mirror as she dipped her hands into my wet fro and began to part it into sections. If this experience was new to her, she wasn’t letting on. Her movements and slightly flared nostrils indicated she was frustrated with me after our longer than necessary conversation about if I wanted my hair ‘trimmed’or ‘chopped’. Then again, we were having this conversation in broken English/Korean. I still liked this hairdresser.



Split ends finally sorted!

Section, comb, snip. Section, comb, snip. As she worked, I spotted staff in the background watching us. I also spotted them watching my mate Keisha who was next to me. Keisha, being the braver of us two, decided on a big chop. I kept thinking, 'FINALLY, we're getting our natural hair cut in a Korean hairdresser'.

A failed hairdresser attempt...

Before striking gold with Leekaja Hairbis, we had walked into another hairdresser just down the road. Shooo… that can only be termed as a complete eyeball experience. When I was called to sit in the chair, I whipped the band from my hair and let my mane burst free. The Korean hairdresser looked at my hair, and according to Tarryn and Keisha, the look on her face was priceless. In a panic, she walked away to her colleague, they discussed a few things in low tones and she came back saying in Korean and English, “No, no, sorry, sorry.” Willing to try anyway, I said in English, “it’s ok! We can try. I will show you.” Show her? Really Nadia? As if I’m skilled in the art of trimming and snipping hair the size of mine. Slightly disheartened, I pulled my hair back into a bun and we left.

The second hairdresser we tried, did not hesitate for a second. Our bags were placed in a locker, coats hung up and we were led to the wash area. My hair was washed and conditioned with a FANTASTIC head massage thrown in. Bless you Korea for that…Bless you. I then got a cut/trim. Even though they didn't moisturize or style my hair after blow-drying it, I don’t fault my hairdresser for this. I reckon she deserves a round of slow clapping considering she was willing to try. Hair-care here in Korea has been a concern for me as an expat. It was exciting to find someone ready to try after I had finally put my nerves and concerns aside.




The lovely Keisha before her big-chop.

Big-chop success!

How much is a hairdresser in Busan?

Will I go back? You bet your split ends I will. Both Keisha and I paid 20000won/R200/$20 each for the cut. Should you decide that the time has come to trim/cut/chop, here are their details:

Directions to the hairdresser we went to:

Take the Orange Subway Line to the PNU (Busan National University) stop. Come out exit 3 and turn right. Take your second left into Busandaehak-ro. Leekaja Hairbis is on your right.

Salon details: 413-16, Jangjeon- 3 Dong, Keumjung-Gu, Busan-Si, Korea 
051.583.1060- 1006.

There is a branch opening in Deokcheon! Walk straight out of exit 9, and it’s above the Starbucks.

Do you know of any other hairdressers that attempt to cut/trim/treat/style afros in Busan or around Korea? Let me know! 

Nadia

Keeping count

At the end of an activity in class, I will either clap or count the kids down in an attempt to get their attention. If they’re chit-chattering like angels (which is rare), I count backwards from five. 

By zero they’ve turned in their seats and their eyes are on either myself or Co. If it’s quite rowdy, the clap works. As a teacher in Korea, you have to make a plan! My (ingenious) clap song/chant/activity goes as follows:


Me: “Clap your hands once!”

Class: *One clap*

Some smartie kid in the back: *Claps five times*

Me: “Clap your hands twice!”

Class: *Claps twice*

Me: “Clap your hands three times!” (At this point most of the kids are clapping along.)

Class: *Claps three times*

I’ll usually repeat the activity to ensure that I have their full attention before moving on. With the little ones this can take some time. I'm happy to note that we now have better clapping activities than this one... phew. 

Learning the Korean language:

Counting. Who knew it would become a focal point in my life? I count my kids down, I count claps, I count my blessings and in previous posts I’ve been counting the number of days I’ve lived in Korea. My greatest hustle now is learning how to count all over again; this time learning to count like one of my third graders in my new language- Korean/Hangeul.


I like language in use. Using my skills for daily activities like grocery shopping, speaking to a neighbour or even to the kids helps it stick. When we use a funny video at the beginning of a lesson, or if I draw two stickmen with a romantic story, it’s awesome seeing the kids more interested and wanting to learn a new English expression. Ok maybe not the romance one for the little ones but it sure worked for the teacher's class! Tap into aht motivates them and we are moving! Don't tap into it and you'll be sure to see drool, pen-tapping and the backs of heads. Trust me on this. I know. My motivation? Wanting to know how much the veggie man wants from me when I buy his dusty carrots or how much is that Americano? I’m tired of holding out a few notes and coins after guessing what he wants, only for him to count the correct amount in my hand anyway and give me the change. Lame Nadia. Lame.

Learning Korean for beginners - a crash course! 

Last week in my bi-weekly Korean class, we were practicing reading and writing numbers in Hangeul. So I figured that for the purpose of revision, you dear reader and interested Korean expat, would get a short counting/number education too. 

Right. For me to even TRY and think about writing out 7396 in Korean, I needed to get my head around the words/writing of 10, 100, 1000 and 10 000.





*Buddy Tarryn made awesome pics to accompany her notes and these images stick really well in my head when I have to attempt quick number thinking. She drew a ship, a bird's beak, cheon... and a man.*





This past weekend, buddy Tarryn and I practiced the number system. With Korean words rolling off our inexperienced tongues, it was time to start combining numbers into something bigger and sexy like 7396. What works for me when trying to figure out a number bigger than 9 is to break it down straight away.   

	Thousands	Hundreds	Tens	Ones
481	-	400	80	1
		사 백	팔십	일
		sah bek	pal shib	il
7396	7000	300	90	6
	칠 천	삼백	구십	육
	chil chon	sahm bek	gu shib	yook

This website over here will give you a better idea regarding the two counting/number systems in Korea. Anyway, that's all from me this week. I hope you're motivated to keep on learning the Korean language - let me know how it goes :)  

Do you have any tips to improve counting in Korean? 

Liebster Award for the win!

. The Liebster award? Come again? A fellow traveller and blogger, Simone Armer, recently tagged me in a post on Facebook nominating me for this (is it prestigious?) award. She too was nominated for the award and answered questions about life in Japan, where she is currently based. Her beautiful photos and sharp writing come together wonderfully to form Paintings from the Cave.Thank you Simone for the nomination and questions. A suggestion from me to you, if you do one useful thing today, go check out her blog here.

Back to my newly acquired nomination. Like all ‘youths’ in my day, I sought counsel from my good friend “Google” to find out more about the nomination. From what I can gather, this nomination is a way to expose smaller blogs and to network the blogging world. The rules are simple: accept or decline your nomination, thank and provide the link to your nominator’s blog, answer their questions and finally nominate five blogs for the award while providing your own set of questions. Here goes! 

1. Knowing what you know now, if you could go back and tell yourself one piece of advice before you set out on your current journey, what would it be?

“Nadia...prepare your taste-buds for a journey of their own.” Let’s place that in context: I remember my body going into reflex mode as it was ready to gag and hurl the first silkworm larvae I had ever eaten here in Korea. When I threw it into my mouth and bit, the little bugger burst like a swollen grape and the pungent juices flowed into my mouth. One chew and a quick swallow later, I was done with it! I will never do it again. But I did it and I didn’t die thanks to a huge gulp of booze.

2. What is your biggest inner conflict when you travel?

‘Should I take this? Should I leave this? Oh but I MIGHT need this?” That gives me sleepless nights.

3. What do you tell people about your home country?

A day or two before I left Eshowe, as my grandfather’s car curved around the green hills, I remember looking at the brilliant blue sky, white puffy clouds and sugar-cane fields. It felt like my country was saying goodbye in the best way it knew how. I tell my kids that I teach about the beautiful weather South Africa has to offer and I even miss the stinking heat waves! Amazing how you only realise it when you are gone. I also tell of the different languages, cultures, foods and religions that South Africa is so blessed to contain. When living in such a homogenous country such as South Korea, you realise how you took diversity for granted in South Africa. I have become quite patriotic!

4. Which place, where you are now, serves the best food? What is your favorite dish there?

To be honest, my favourite ‘dish’ here in Korea is the chicken on a stick which is served almost everywhere in Busan! The chicken is tender, cooked on an open grill by street vendors and is usually coated either with a sweet and sticky sauce or a spicy sauce. I feel like I don’t get enough chicken in the week so when I do find my fix, I make a mad dash for the queue and wait patiently for my happiness to be served on a wooden stick. *You can find these vendors almost everywhere in Busan, I’m not sure about the rest of Korea*

5. What is something you wish you could bring from home in abundant supply?

I would love to have hugs from my family in a bottle that I could just whip out and use each time I need a big hug! I miss pap, Five Roses Tea, brown bread (I only seem to find white bread in the local stores), cheese in blocks (again, you will usually find cheese in slices! Agrrr), and I miss the awesome adverts that play on SA screens. I mean who can forget, “I love it when you talk foreign?”

6.  What is something you’d like to take home in abundant supply?

Kimchi, the sticky chicken, Korean BBQ, the sticky chicken, green tea and did I mention the sticky chicken? I’m a foodie as you may have noticed. J

7.  What is something you packed that has served you well?

My Tomy Takkies have served me well over this period in Korea! I took time choosing them before I left and I wear them everywhere. They boarded my flight out of SA with me, they kept my toes warm when I literally froze during the tail-end of Korea’s winter and they have walked kilometer after kilometer with me as I have explored my new home.

8.  What of your home country do you see in the country you live in now?

Respect for elders. There is a respect for older people here in Korea that I am able to identify with considering I had such a close bond with my grandparents growing up. I really admire a nation that is able to tend to and remember the older folk that helped build and still keep the nation alive.

Anyway! Here are my questions for the following bloggers who are either living in another country or have recently soared to new destinations:

Erica:   The Bartletts Abroad

Alex:     Ninja Teacher

Elna:    Sometimes Elna Blogs 

Kate:   Keeping Tabs on Kate

Ilze:      Ilze in Korea

a)   Why did you decide to use blogging as a way of capturing your adventures? Why not Facebook, Twitter etc?

b)   What was the scariest thing about leaving your country?

c)    I am a student leaving University. Tell me why I should travel?

d)   Describe a food (make my mouth water!) you have had on your travels that    made your eyes water from happiness (or possibly too much spice!)?

e)   Describe the moment when you knew you had made the right choice to travel?

f)     Solo travel or group travel? Why?

g)    How have you dealt with challenging cultural differences?

Nadia xo

Learning curve- Part 2

Wednesdays are my crazy days. I wake up at 5am (or rather I am trying to train myself to bounce out of bed at that time), march to school, teach the kiddies and by 3pm I need to be in my takkies (trainers/sneakers) ready to play a game of volleyball with the staff. After that I race to Ukulele class, and from there I have Korean language classes across town. One word: "Shoo"!

Let's take it back a few activities to chat about volleyball. I
wasn’t too keen to do it considering I know nothing about the game and the teachers (plus Principal and Vice Principal) take the game quite seriously. As much as I have tried, serving during each Volleyball game has not been a highlight in my Korean life. The ball just doesn’t like to go over the net. A few weeks ago while trying to serve, (EVERYONE looked at me…waiting), I heard the sports coach use English for the first time: “Power up!” The image of ‘Dragon Ball Z’ and their stocky characters came into my head and I nodded at him with a giggle dying to break free. He wasn’t smiling. Then again, when he burst out laughing during a specifically vigorous session, I honestly think that was the first time I had seen him smile in my three months here! Nice man I’m sure.

Anyway, the Vice-Principal and Principal (bless them) always make a point of reminding me to come to volleyball. If anything, I am learning to count in Korean and the Vice-Principal takes it upon herself to practice with me before every session. I love seeing the focus on her face and the broad grin she displays when I finally make contact with the ball and this time it goes where it should. I have also started to slowly get better during my service! Let it be known though, they make me stand much closer to the net now as opposed to behind the line when serving. Hey, small steps right?!

And then there are Korean classes. These have really tested me. Really tested me. It has been almost four weeks of trying to train my mouth to befriend the new vowels and consonants. It’s also been four weeks of trying to figure out the difference between the “ㅔ” and “ㅐ” sound. To me, both sound like “air” and as our Korean teacher told us, we will have to just learn that words have either one or the other. So basically, learn your vocab, learn your spelling!



*Click 'play' to hear some Korean*

I tried my new language skills on my kids during break at school. They wrote their names on the board and it was pretty awesome being able to slowly pronounce their names more accurately than before. There is always something great about someone being able to address you by your name, which is pronounced correctly. So yay for new skills!


A bonus: being able to stand outside a shop and slowly decipher the Korean alphabet. This has become my latest hobby, even if I get the odd glance from people. For now, I may be able to read the letters, but I can’t attach any meaning considering my vocabulary is minimal. I am trying to slowly build my vocab, but this is taking longer than I thought.

Anyway dear reader, I would like to share this quote by Jiddu Krishnamurti I stumbled across recently. It sums up my learning curve as an expat quite well. "There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.”

Nadia  

Read "Learning Curve- Part 1" here.

Learning curve- Part 1

It's been three months since I waved goodbye to my beloved grandparents at King Shaka International airport, since I used my new passport for the first time and then crossed the equator with one suitcase, laptop and my trusty backpack. It’s been three months filled with trying new foods, smelling unfamiliar scents, breaking old habits, meeting wonderful
people and living an expat life at the age of 23.

A yummy lunch has just settled my ravenous tummy and I'm sitting at my desk typing this post during my break. Outside, familiar sounds of sixth grade boys playing soccer filters into my classroom. Their frequent chants of “Do It!!” as they train, keeps me smiling while I plan for my next lesson. Just like that, listening to them train daily, seeing close to 300 kids a week for English and the interesting conversations with my co-teachers has now become my norm. I quite like this new normal.

I am also learning. My goodness I am learning... I have begun Ukulele classes every Wednesday and to date, I con only play the chords to ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ with gusto! My Ukulele instructor (the Musical Wonder) speaks basic English but doesn’t hesitate to physically move my fingers up and down in an attempt to teach me. Over the last couple of weeks, I have sat during the hour-long lessons feeling disheartened and tears threatening to spill over because the language barrier has been taking its toll. At the best of times I can follow instruction during the Ukulele class by watching her swift fingers and making my own notes. When the pace quickens however, my fingers feel like sausages and instead of strumming out a confident D-chord, I am still trying to figure out where we are in the song.

But miracles do happen. A turning point came during this week’s lesson! Last week the Musical Wonder gave me a Ukulele to take home and practice. I played the G7-chord over and over, trying to force my fingers to befriend the strings. During our lesson this week, I was able to keep up a little better than usual and even the dreaded D-chord didn’t kill my musical mojo. While plucking at the strings and trying to figure out some chord or the other, the Musical Wonder said something in Korean to the rest of the class and all I heard was, “Nadia seon-saeng-nim…..” (which translates as ‘Nadia teacher…). The rest of the staff grinned at me while nodding in agreement and whipping out their next page of music. Being one step behind as usual, the Musical Wonder helped me find the page. It finally dawned as to why she mentiond me to the others only when she pointed at the lyrics. She had searched for a song with both Korean and English lyrics. We were about to play and sing in my mother tongue. I made sure that each chord I played was as close to being correct as possible and we all plucked and sang a slightly off-tune version of 'Edelweiss' from 'The Sound of Music'.

I bowed deeply as I left class that day, waved and said "Ahn Nyeong Hee Ke Se Yo" (Goodbye if you are leaving the room/place). With the Ukulele swung over my shoulder once again, a large toothy grin spread across my face and humming 'Edelweiss', my learning curve didn't seem so steep anymore.

Read "Learning Curve- Part 2" here.