Cut the Karma

I have heard travel being described as some disease which became rampant around the mid-fifties.  It is funny because some people's reaction to travelling and living abroad is that it is something and I quote "which I will get out of my system".  This would suggest that it is in fact some sort of problem and it has always surprised me that there were some narrow minded individuals who actually believed this to be true.  If I'm honest, I can understand that not all people would find excitement in the life I have chosen, and for some this prospect would be less than exciting - perhaps even frightening. It has certainly made me evaluate what I myself find frightening and ironically, it is routine.  Knowing that something is going to be the same and form a pattern is what really scares the shit out of me. 
  That is why I am sitting on the bus travelling from Seoul to a nearby airport with my recruiter deciding to tell me all the things that foreigners find difficult when they come to Korea.  Fortunately my mind is projected far beyond the conversation, flung deep into the backdrop of green mountains, blue ocean and bridges connecting a host of small islands.  I am simply wondering if the landscape that I am seeing is real because it doesn't relate to anything I have seen before.  Suddenly I realise that it is time to acknowledge my recruiter so that he thinks I have been listening and he is now mentioning something about how difficult it is to get a proper haircut.

Two weeks later and I am sitting in the hairdressers in Yeosu with a small dossier in my hand.  It has pictures of numerous people who I googled whose hair style looked pretty good and a translated paragraph to match.  To be honest, getting my hair cut anywhere for the first time is pretty annoying for me.  I feel sure that it is a waste of time to even explain what you want because most hairdressers have already decided what they will do the moment you enter the shop and that's the same style which they have given the other 27 people who have been in that day.  On this particular day, I have very low expectations thanks to my recruiter and I am also wondering how much karma will come into play.  You see, two years ago I was travelling with two other friends from back home.  Two of us decided to get our hair cut in Bangkok and we went through the normal procedure of  pointing to a picture of various celebrities.  Then they washed our hair, put is in a chair and started to cut.  After spending ten painstaking minutes wondering if I should start a conversation, I was finished.  Looking over at my friend who intelligently had decided not to get his hair cut, he was bent over in hysterics.  It wasn't the reaction I was hoping for but then I realised he wasn't looking at me.  I turned to my left and suddenly was laughing too when I saw that my other friend was wearing the 'special cap' for highlights and they were bringing every product under the sun and offering it to him.  He didn't look too happy so we rescued him, sort of.  He still ended up having some product which apparently aided hair growth and it was extremely expensive too.
  Despite my haircut prompting hundreds of my students to believe that I am now joining the Korean army, I am glad that this 'first' in korea is out of the way and done with.  It made me think of the fact that when you travel, it is important to remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable, it is designed to make it's own people comfortable.