Day 18, 19, 20 - New Glasses, More Soju, and the Jimjilbang

Day 18 - Friday

Since my tentative trip to Seoul was canceled, I had the entire weekend to basically do whatever I wanted. Friday I went to get new glasses because so many ETAs highly recommended it. The guys there were awesome--super nice and their English was great. When I spit out a few Korean sentences, they struck up a conversation with me that was heavily aided by their cell phone dictionaries. The younger guy did my eye exam and insisted I read the numbers in Korean, so between using a second/third language and having bad eyesight, I must've sounded pretty dumb. But new lenses, frames, and the exam all together cost me just 60,000W, less than $50. And he gave his business card to me and the other ETA I went with. SUCCESS.

In the evening after KEY Club, we went out with the Koreans (obviously). We hit up a foreigner bar where there were a bunch of creepers from Canada, and another place that serves this really weird watermelon concoction that involves milk and Sprite. Yeah. It was the usual--drinking games, funny cultural exchange, lots of soju, hilarious interpersonal relationships between the "brothers". The picture is actually from last week, but what're you gonna do about it, huh?

[[Also, as an aside, the boy in the picture to my left is the same boy from the first outing with KEY Club. For the record, he is not a Playboy. All the older "brothers" pick on him because he's so cute and young looking (very desirable traits), but he's incredibly nice and an absolute sweetheart. Okay, now that that's cleared up...]]

Day 19 - Saturday

I went to a board game cafe. It's literally what it sounds like. It's a cafe where there's a bunch of board games you can play. It was a lot of fun and really chill so I'd like to go back sometime. There's a lot of weird cafes here, like a cat cafe (exactly what it sounds like, a bunch of cats inside a coffee shop).

Day 20 - Sunday (today)

And today we went to the public bathhouse/sauna, the jimjilbang (찜질방). We arrived and split into groups by gender to change into our provided pajama-like clothes. When we stepped off the elevator onto the girls' floor, we were greeted immediately by a bunch of naked Korean ladies. I don't know what we were expecting, but I think we were all assuming there would be another room before that happened. There wasn't.

We changed into our pajama set and went upstairs to meet the boys for the sauna part. There were three rooms: cold, hot, and super-hot. The cold room was just pleasantly chilly, the hot room was something like 75C, and the super-hot was literally a human-sized kiln. I could only stand the kiln for five minutes before I had to leave. The hot room was oppressive just because the humidity was so high.

After trying all the rooms, all the girls sat down to have some boiled/pickled eggs and fruit juice with two of the KEY Club girls that came with us. It was really sweet of them to go because we would've been completely lost without guides to tell us where to go and what to do. We had some really good gossip time and then mentally prepped to go get naked.

Back downstairs in the ladies-only area, we changed out of our pajamas and into our nothings. The place sold shampoo, conditioner, exfoliants, face masks... everything you would possibly need. We got our things and ventured into the naked-ajumma-filled bath area. There were standing-showers, hand-held showers you sat on a bench for, and four pools of various temperature (think hot tubs). We did our thing. Nobody really stared too much. Rather, their stares were polite enough that we didn't feel completely on display, but I did catch a lot of people trying to discreetly check out the foreigners. I guess I don't blame them, since it was an experience that I don't think a lot of foreigners would be okay with. But hey, when in Korea, do as the Koreans, right?

This week will be super busy with Camp F*bright teaching, supplemental cultural talks, and studying for Korean class. Again, sorry for the lack of pictures, but I will really really try to take more!