On Wednesday after work, Joanne and I decided to de-stress so we headed to the Jimjilbang - aka sauna. They give you shorts and a t-shirt to change into, then we headed to the locker room. In the locker room I saw A LOT of naked Korean women. After sweating in the sauna they all take showers, and seeing as how Korea doesn't believe in full sized towels, everyone just walks around naked. They are completely unselfconscious about it. Part of me wished I could be like that, but I'm most definitely not. After changing, Joanne and I headed upstairs. The sauna is huge - there's a big main room that's nice and cozy warm, then there are a ton of smaller rooms that are hot; like the mud room (there wasn't really mud in there, just brown, brick walls), the salt room (there were actually little salt rocks in that one), the oxygen room (I'm guessing they pump in oxygen), and the silver cave room (everything was painted, you guessed, silver). The mud and salt rooms were 61 degrees Celsius, i.e. 140 degrees Fahrenheit,and the silver cave was 118 degrees. It felt nice to go in and sweat everything out. The other rooms were nice and comfy temps. It was a relaxing day. I think I'm a fan of the Jimjilbang.
Tonight I went to meet my friend Chris (Seong-Cheon) for dinner. On the metro ride over a Korean guy actually said hi to me. It was just too bad he happened to be kind of old and balding. Then when I was in the metro stop waiting for Chris this really tall (for a Korean, he was probably 6'1"), cute guy smiled at me! I smiled back - I was in heaven for about 30 seconds before his girlfriend showed up. Chris came and said he wanted to eat spaghetti, but I didn't feel like spaghetti. When I told Chris that he said, "Good, I was just saying that for you. I thought you didn't like Korean food." But because I love Korean food (well, some of it)we had a nice dinner of Sam Gip Some - grilled pork with lots of side dishes. It was a nice evening with a friend and good food. What more can I ask for?
2 comments:
Turn Korean!!! Just this past year was the first time that I went to a Korean sauna in California. My aunt wanted to take my sister Debbie and I, and my mom joined. Ok, how about seeing all them naked? Debbie and I were so embarrassed at first. I mean, I don't normally sit in a sauna with my naked relatives. hehe. Guess that's normal in k world.
This story reminds me of the time when we were in Russia. Remember when you went to your homestays banya where they had you strip down so they could hit you with sticks..........teehee *giggle*giggle* good times..:P
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