The Haircut

With a mere THREE votes, Ben decided that it was time. Here's the play-by-play of "Haircut Day":






TA DAAAA!

You be the judge.

Mister I-cut-my-hair-every-other-Saturday-so-it-feels-long-by-day-ten hasn't had a haircut since the end of OCTOBER. Can you believe it? He claims that it is all coming off on Friday morning (Thursday night back at home). What do you think? Should it stay around for awhile, or should it all come off in a couple of days?

Multi-cultural?

A couple of weekends ago, we met with our South Bend friends, Derrick and Lavon Null. They let us come along to a birthday party for one of their friends, which was going to be at a Mexican place in one of the famous areas of Seoul. We both love Mexican food, so we jumped at the chance to go. We didn't realize we were also jumping at the chance to wear these:


At home, they usually only make the birthday-boy (or-girl) wear the sombrero. Apparently, that is not the proper Mexican tradition...in Korea. The Birthday couple were given panchos to wear, along with the stylish hats. Here are our friends Derrick and Lavon:

The food was worth it all!

Valentine's Dinner

Our Valentine's dinner was spent at our apartment with some friends from school. Last week, we were pleasantly surprise with a couple of packages from home, filled with spices, dressings, and delicious warm drinks (and every kind of baking chip available at Meijer, thank you, Nikki!). With those treats, we were able to make an Italian-style meal for six, a real challenge with just a toaster oven and two small burners. Nonetheless, it was pretty tasty. Our Korean guests were very kind, bringing with them some...interesting...gifts. One of them was this: the "Poop stick". Yes, that is what I said.

It is actually a personal massager, much like a wooden back-scratcher. Instead of scratching your back, you gently pound your back with the fuzzy, brown blob at the end of the stick.

Of course, no Valentine's would be complete without Tom climbing onto the shelves and drawing a giant heart on our giant windows.

Quickly followed by KyungMin, who gave us a friendly bi-lingual window Valentine message.


KyungMin also brought us a traditional Korean game, called Go/Stop. We tried to learn, but had to look up the instructions in English the next day. We taught them a fun game called "No Thanks". Can you guess who won?


YoungUn, me, and KyungMin on my favorite steps.

Small Surprises

One of Ben's students spends some time with us every week outside of class. He just so happens to have many, many uncles, SIX of whom are all strawberry farmers. That's great news for us! He brought us a bag of sweet, delicious, perfectly ripe strawberries.

Now, the strawberries were absolutely delectable on their own. But, I did also happen to have a can of whipped cream that I was saving for a special occasion. What a better place to use it than on top of strawberries?!? So, after making my own version of bisquick, or at least trying, we had a nice treat: Strawberry Shortcake.


Some people were wondering if we would be able to watch the SuperBowl. We didn't think so. Of course, we were missing the usual festivities of snacks, friends, and commercials, and we were only expecting to watch highlights on the internet the next day. Well, to our surprise and delight, we turned on our TV on our Monday morning and went to one of the sports channels. Sure enough, there it was--the game was there, and it was LIVE!



We are on week one out of six with no breaks (except for the weekend), so small surprises like this are a real joy.

Let us know how you are doing! We'd love to hear what is happening back at home!