The Price of Beauty!

Here in Korea, beauty is everything. Everyone here is quite blunt about it. I have had children say I am beautiful because of my white skin, and then days where I have too much makeup on and they "Oh teacher, too much..."

Beautiful here is to have the whitest skin possible (check!) and pointy noses (check! - so far I am doing well!) Then of course to be super thin (not a check) and big colourful eyes (check!) Females go to all lengths to be "beautiful" in this culture.

For example, when we wash our face at home, maybe we use cleanser, toner , moisturizer. For the most part that is all we use in North America. Here, when they get ready to go to bed there is cleanser, toner, eye cream (inhibiting wrinkles), serum (another anti-wrinkle), water cream then moisturizer, BEFORE BED! I have tried it, and my skin is smoother.. but there is no way I am keeping that up. I don't even try to do that in the morning. So in the morning you do all the night steps, then a sun cream, and then BB cream. It is almost like foundation, before you even put on makeup, which they put on alot! Whenever you buy makeup here, they load you up on samples of all of these products, so I am just doing it for the hell of it to use up the samples!

Plastic surgery is a common thing here for women. They tend to make their noses have a more pronounces slope and actually have surgery to have their eyes widened. You could ask any female and they know plenty of people who have done it, or them themselves have already had surgery.

You can tell how popular piercings are here though by the price! A couple of girlfriends and I, and Jay, wanted to get our ears pierced. I wanted my second holes and my rook pierced. The guy was great, funny and really good at what he does. It only cost me though, 14$. We laughed! We told them that back in Canada that would get us maybe the earring he pierced our ear with! So Jay got the courage and got his ear pierced too, only 3$, might aswell!

For majority of Koreans they go to Gingabongs. They are Korean bath houses. I finally got to go! You pay 5$ (again.. super cheap) and you walk right into the female change room, and you are surrounded by all naked women. (O ya forgot to mention it literally means a big room with tubs and pools and showers and all women are naked!) You get over the fact of feeling shy pretty fast. People are buying shampoo and soaps all naked. So off goes the clothes, I buy some scrubs and soaps and off to the showers. It is a custom to shower and scrub (literally your skin off) before entering into the pool. It is to show that you are clean.

You then are free to bathe in hot tubs, cold tubs, go outside into a really hot tub, pools with massage jets and chairs. It is the most relaxing thing I have EVER done! I was there for probably 2 hours bathing with my girlfriends and relaxing! I do plan on keeping it routine and going once a week!

Plus I've been told you look beautiful after you leave! :) Always about beauty here!

Christmas in Korea!

We are a bit late on this, but our Christmas in Korea was wonderful!

My parents had brought up gifts and my mom made stockings for Jay and I. She even brought stocking stuffers! Jay and I woke up and opened our stockings in bed, like I have always done with my parents every Christmas morning. It was really nice to keep the traditions going. We exchanged gifts and had a nice breakfast! We tried as much to keep it to our traditions at home, we were both feeling a bit homesick at this time!


We even got Kip a present! He got to get all dressed up for our Christmas Day!

When Christmas got closer and closer, the kids got more excited. Santa was coming to visit them Christmas Eve at school! They would each receive one gift from him! That is all that they could talk about! Mom had sent a craft for them to do for Christmas. They all loved it! I have a video of them thanking mom, but I'll have to wait until we go home to show it, it is too large to post on here!