Friday, March 28, 2008

Sleep Over!


Curt (hubby) is in Japan for a few days and when my Korean girlfriends heard of it, they wanted to stay overnight for a sleepover. I haven't had a sleepover since I was young and it sounded like so much fun. They came last night after work arriving with these gorgeous flowers and a cake. I just love the Korean custom of bringing a small gift when visiting friends.
They arrived around 7:30 pm and I cooked (rather heated up) buddae jjigae from a local restaurant. I also managed to provide a couple of side dishes. We ate and laughed. I made too much rice and so I was going to throw it out (a big no no in South Korea). Hellena said that Koreans leave the extra rice on warm in the rice cooker overnight to eat the next day. We finished the dishes and then sat around talking.
Hellena's phone kept ringing and I found out she has a new boyfriend, one she has been dating for about a month. He is the typical attentive boyfriend, calling her 3-4 times before we went to bed around 12:30 am. I got to talk to him but he didn't know any English and was afraid to speak so I did all the talking. We are all going to go out to dinner soon.
We have plenty of room in our apartment and the girls were our first guests to sleep in the new queen size bed we bought for the guest room. When they saw the bed, they were amazed and shocked. The bed sits on a metal frame and has a box spring along with the mattress. Since they are used to sleeping on the floor, they were worried they would fall off the bed. It also has a pillow top which makes it really soft which was another thing that was new to them. They now see when some of their American clients complain about the hard beds here in Korea.
The girls also forgot some basic supplies. Luckily, I had plenty of toothbrushes, toothpaste and deodorant. The only thing and most important that I didn't have was face cream containing UV protection. Korean girls NEVER leave home without this protection from the sun on their face. They were pretty worried but I told them that this time of year and the little time they would actually be out in the sun, if indeed, tomorrow was a sunny day would pose little if any threat from the sun's UV rays. They were really upset and couldn't believe that Americans don't do the same. Maybe I'm out of the loop, but I told them the only time I use UV protection is if I'm going to be tanning or spending a lot of time in the sun and only the summer sun. I told them it wasn't necessary to wear protection every day when you spend almost your entire day in an office but they said that the office lights also cause UV rays. I hadn't heard that and don't know if that's true.

4 comments:

Helena said...

Sounds like fun! (I've never heard of indoor lights having UV rays. Except maybe those full-spectrum lights. Hmmm.)

The guest room sounds lovely! Can I come visit? ;)

CreekHiker / HollysFolly said...

I had to google that about the UV rays in the office. It's basically a different spectrum. You can't even see the kind that causes damage. They are VERY safe at work.

So, B and I were BOTH talking about how we don't wear sunscreen at all here. And we discovered we don't for the same reason: the smell. Any time a moisturizer has sunscreen, you can count on it: it will stink! I'm a "super-smeller" and I have a huge reaction to odors I don't like. I'm sure we're NOT the only ones so maybe they should make it smell better!

I wonder, does it smell any better there?

kim said...

Sounds like great fun! Your bed sounds wonderful - we have a king sized bed in our place but it is soooooo hard.

Becky said...

Helena: Come on over!!

Holly: I don't think the girls will buy that the office lights are safe. I can't believe how shocked they were that I didn't wear UV protection on my face before going out.

Kim: The beds are hard here so I'm glad we brought ours from home.

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