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The Haircut

You'll never believe it.  Ivan got his hair cut! Gone is the braid he's had for fifteen years. He's been talking about it for awhile and finally decided that it was time. The decision was hurried along by the fact that, with the extra moisture in the air here, his hair is seriously out of control.  Even in a braid it acts like an animal trying to leave his head. He asked me to accompany him on this expedition to a hair salon in our neighbourhood, one we pass each day.  Westerners (yongos) are an oddity in Busan.  I think the hairdressers were surprised to see us come in the door and certainly the hairdresser who was assigned to Ivan was very nervous about cutting his hair!  First she wanted to know if his hair was permed.  Nope! Every single ringlet dripping halfway down his back is the real thing!  Then she showed us a big glossy magazine.... a cross between a Christmas Wish Book of sorts and a photo album of fashion-is-the-passion criminals!  We looked over all our options in the book. Ivan wanted to bolt at this point.  The book was full of hundreds of hair styles, each one an imaginative variation of a tornado or crop-circle!  Chic? Mais, Oui!!  But, not exactly the angst-ridden hair styles that Ivan was looking for!  Finally we found something that would suit him...short on the back and sides...a little longer on top.....snip, snip,snip...the haircut began.  Everyone in the salon, hairdressers and patrons alike, were watching the progress of Ivan's haircut!  He watched my face in the mirror, intently trying to read what I thought of how the cut was going.  I gave him encouraging smiles and positive hand gestures. He was pale with worry. It looked like she was doing a fine job to me. And, if she happened to bomb, it wouldn't be anything a hat and a couple of weeks couldn't fix!  The hairstylist anxiously consulted with us a few times (our Korean isn't so hot, so it was more like miming) and eventually the haircut developed to suit Ivan perfectly!! Hurray! We all smiled and laughed and were happy with the successful outcome!  And that is the Tale of Ivan's Haircut.



 

Last weekend the Vice Priciple from Ivan's school kindly and graciously took us on a tour down part of the coast near Busan. The three of us had an excellent afternoon!  Our first stop was Taejongdae Resort Park. To get there we drove along a winding road, hugging the coast, More than 700ft down was the sea on which were a multitude of ocean-going vessels making their way to and from the port of Busan.

As we began driving through Taegongdae, development ceased for the most part and lush forests appeared all around us with mountains rising vertically on one side and the sea appearing far below (and I mean far below) on the other side. We parked the car along the road and joined the many people who were walking down to the lighthouse on that beautiful Saturday afternoon.  Down and down we went and down and down some more!! We stopped to look at this massive piece of rock below us, ontop of which people were wandering, sitting, taking photos, etc.  I thought, "My God, what are they doing out there?!"  Ivan said outloud, "Who are those crazy people?"  The Vice Principle laughed and admitted that people regularily fall off that rock....to their deaths, of course....hundreds of feet down!  From another lookout area on the staircase we saw a long tent and colourful umbrellas set up on a flat rock close to the water.  They were tied down with heavy ropes to prevent the wind from whipping them away.  We were told it was a restaurant. A restaurant?  Yes, indeed. A seafood restaurant.  I think it must have been a raw sea food restaurant (they have those in the area) because the setup did not appeared to be one you'd see for a regular restaurant.  It was a long way down, let me tell you.  The people were visible as just slightly more than specks.  And, how in heaven's name did they get down there?  And, waves came crashing onto the rock...I'm sure the patrons were served sea spray along with their fish.  I couldn't help but think that it was a perfect place for a rogue wave to snatch you away in the blink of an eye! However! I found it exceptionally enchanting and did a quick drawing of the scene and hope to make it into a large painting soon.

 I usually think of going up to a lighthouse.  In this case you went down to it because it was on the side of a mountain cliff that plummeted vertically to the sea!  The Vice Principle invited us to go to the top of the lighthouse. Ivan quickly mounted the staircase and was gone. I stayed on the balconey area with the Vice Principle.  We were both dizzy enough looking down on the sea from this height and neither of us felt the need to go any higher, thank you very  much!  It was frighteningly and impossibly high and I couldn't help but think of how hard it must have been to build all of this.  The contruction workers must have had nerves of steel.  After Ivan descended, we had refreshing iced-coffee in a little restaurant that jutted out over the water. Soon afterwards we are walking down even more stairs, these ones more casual in nature than the sturdy ones previously exerienced.  These stairs lead to that flat-topped rock, where earlier we'd seen the "crazy people"!  Now we were one of them!  Great. Just Great. Can you tell I'm afraid of heighths?

Without question we had a spectacular view of the sea and the cliffs from there!  I had the chance to do a drawing of the cliffs (which are blue, pink white, purple and gold) while Ivan and the Vice Principle had a good talk, standing there in the sunshine with a soft breeze blowing.  So very pleasant in every way.  ( After my mom read this she wondered how we got back up all the stairs. She wondered if we took an elevator.  I burst out laughing at the mere idea of it.  An elevator?  No, of course not!!  We walked back up the stairs along with everyone else!!  Nobody in Busan is afraid of stairs.  Young or elderly, fit or feeble, wearing hiking boots or 4 inch stilettos, or even if you are sporting a wooden leg...it's up, up the stairs you go! No problem! )

We also stopped at a place called Pebble Beach where the waves eternally push the rounded stones onto shore before pulling them out again.  What a lullabye chorus all those stones made clicking and clacking against each other so rythmically!  I wished I could have made a little bed by the water and listened to the rocks talking and singing all night long. That would be my idea of heaven.

 Afterwards when we were back in the car driving along the coast again, we passed this statue of a mother holding a baby in each arm.  The Vice Principle told us that she is there to remind people to refrain from accidently throwing themselves off the cliff (as apparently they are wont to do)!  The statue represents all mothers and is suppose to remind you that your mother gave birth to you and she'll miss you very much if you die so, don't go doing stupid things on cliffs that are 800ft high, ok?    I think that most mothers would like to erect such a statue right inside the heads of their children permanently to make them think twice about doing all kinds of foolish things too numerous to mention!    ( ps   I just happened to be looking in a tourist guide for the area and the cliffs near this statue are called "Suicide Cliffs".  That's horribly sad, isn't it?)

On our way to Gwangalli Beach we stopped for a quick visit to Bexco which is the place that hosted a recent APEC summit.  It's one of Korea 'sci-fi" buildings, as I like to call them because they are so huge and futuristic. If I understood correctly, this is the tallest one-story structure in the world.  Infront of the building is a massive expanse of concrete on which we saw serious rollerbladerers skating in amongst the people walking to and from the events inside...and this mixture of fast skaters with slow walkers doesn't raise the slightest eyebrow here!  Everyone is sharing the space.

Gwangalli Beach is a hotspot on a Saturday night for people dining out.  The traffic was unreal!  Along the beachfront the buildings are aflame with neon lights of every colour imaginable.  The Vice Principle found a quiet restaurant on a side street where we had a wonderful time laughing, talking, and eating.  On the way home we drove along parallel to the Gwangan Bridge for quite some time, since it's very long. The lights on the bridge slowly changed from electric blue, to glowing purple, to peacock green and back again. So pretty.    And, this was the end of our wonderful day!



 

Ivan and I have been looking for wedding rings lately.  We've been looking in jewelry stores and more recently on the internet, as that seems to be a good place to find jewellers who do custom work.  Then I remembered I'd heard a documentary on how much toxic waste is produced during the making of one gold ring...so....being conscientious, we googled "dirty gold" and found the website www.nodirtygold.org which details the unbelieveable pollution that is caused by the mining of gold, silver and copper. Check out the website.  You'll be shocked at the impact this mining is having on the nearby communities and  on air pollution globally.

So...what to do? We had no luck finding "clean gold" on the internet so, we were reviewing other possible options.

I mused outloud, "Well, instead of rings we could each wear a strand of wool around our necks.  You know, 'with this wool I thee wed, baaa  baaa!'"  Ivan looked at me skeptically.  Okay, that idea wasn't going over so well.  What else could we do?  Stone rings would be too cumbersome, glass rings would break, pearls would suit me but, Ivan has shown no interest in them.  Ivan says, "How about tattoos?"  I shook my head vigorously at this suggestion.  Undoubtedly, tattoos can be an art form....for bikers and sailors!!  OK, I know there are great tattoos out there....but....I really didn't want joint ones for our wedding.  I said, "What else is there?  Hmm....there's branding.  We could get branded."  At this point Ivan looked at me very sharply and said, "I'm not interested in getting branded!!"   "That's good," I thought with relief, " because neither am I!"

Our search for enviromentally-friendly rings continues.  We'll let you know what we eventually find!

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