NaNoWriMo and my first jimjilbang

So I'm participating in National Novel Writing Month this month, or NaNoWriMo. It's become an international event and is in its 10th year. The idea is that you write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. Why? To prove you can do it. Being I can't remember the last time I wrote anything that wasn't school related, let alone fiction, I thought it would be a good thing to try. It turns out there are a bunch of foreigners here that are doing it, so I've been able to make some new friends as well. You can view my progress with the little meter on the left side - at the time of this writing I'm doing good at 31,969 words, though I really hate my novel at the moment and have gone a few days without writing. Oops.

Anyway, on Saturday, which was the midpoint, we had a writer's retreat at a jimjilbang (sounds like jim-juh-bong). It's a sauna type substance that is pretty popular over here. We went to the Dragon Hill Spa, which is seven floors and kind of crazy.

You pay to get in ($10 for the time I got there), and they give you clothed and this bracelet with a key and barcode on it. You then take your shoes off and lock them in a locker with your key number right by the entrance, and then go to your gender's locker room - the women were on the third floor, the men on the fifth. You then see a lot of naked Asian women. A lot. And not all 90 year old women like when you go to the gym. (Or maybe I was just always that lucky?) Anyway, then you have a locker where you change into the t-shirt and shorts they gave you, or in my case, go back and exchange them because the waist of the shorts, while it stretches, is as wide as the length of my foot. I'm not exaggerating - I should have taken a picture. Anyway, then you roam about.

We wrote for a while in the cafeteria area on the first floor, then I ate dinner and tried some of the co-ed stuff on that floor - a rock salt sauna, a wood-fired kiln. The rock salt sauna was 55˚C (131˚F), which felt like a hot day in August to me (on right - not my picture). The kiln ones didn't have temperatures, but I wished they did. They had a low, medium, and hot kiln, and by hot they mean the surface of the sun. I was barley glistening in the first sauna, but the hot sauna it was pouring off of me. Inside the floor was wood and there were wooden blocks to sit in, and I still had to sit on my towel on the wooden block before I didn't feel like my butt was burning. Actually, I have a little burn on my knee from where I knelt on the floor for 15 seconds to reach for a wooden block someone had just gotten up from in hopes it would be cooler. The first time I think we lasted two minutes, and I went in a second time, since the other saunas really didn't do anything for me after that, and I think I lasted a whole four minutes. When I pushed my glasses up it felt like the metal burned my nose, and as you may recall, I have a lot of pieces of metal attached to my body. My entire body was also red for a while after that. It was interesting.

I also tried the ice room, which was 10˚C (50˚F), which surprisingly felt really good. This was after the uber hot sauna - well, after adjusting to what felt like an icy temperature of the general room for a couple minutes, and then going into the ice room.

Then I checked out the women's only sections. I didn't have a lot of time for this, as I didn't find out until 8:30 that they charge the overnight rate of another $12 at 9pm, so I was trying to get out before that. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention - you can sleep in them. There are lots of open spaces and people just pass out all over the floor. It's an odd experience.

As for the women only section, which was a little bit of the rest of the third floor and the entire second floor, there was a lot of nakedness. Actually, I didn't see a stitch of clothing on the second floor at all - there may have been signs saying as much for all I know. Luckily, I am surprisingly comfortable being naked when other people I don't know are naked, and I think me walking around was educational for the toothpick Korean women, especially since tattoos are illegal to get here. ;)

There were open shower stalls, or sit down versions with handheld shower heads, all over the place. There were pools of varying temperatures, some with salt water (on left, also not my picture). There was a nice jacuzzi pool as well with jet streams. I didn't see the whole thing, but I believe there are saunas down there too, and there was also supposedly an outdoor women's only pool...which I would assume would also be naked. I may have to try that at some point.

There were also additional services you could pay for - for anything you did extra, you just swiped your bracelet and paid the balance on the way out. Even the restaurants and vending machines worked that way, which was cool. Anyway, they had massages available (I wish I had had the time!), some scary thing called string hair removal, and body scrubbing. I saw some of the body scrubbing, and it consisted of a woman scrubbing down your entire body while you were on a massage table, using a loofah and some kind of scrub. The women scrubbing you were not naked, of course. They are at work, after all. No, they were wearing black bra and underwear! They were all probably in their 40s, but still.

So yes, I've decided that a gay heaven probably includes a jimjilbang. The funny thing is that a lot of Koreans go with friends. I don't know how I'd feel walking around and doing a bunch of stuff naked with my friends. I guess it happened with showering at the gym and all, but this would be hours of hanging out together, naked. What do you think?

Anyway, so that was my cultural experience this weekend. I'll have to try again when I'm not worrying about the time. That's a pretty good deal for $10, although I hear most of them are only $5 but are also a lot smaller.

I'm here!

Well, I am here in South Korea, and have been for almost 48 hours now. I don't have internet yet but I found a wireless that is letting me connect.

I just moved into my apartment today. The people who were in it before left it a giant mess and it needed to be cleaned. It was bad enough that the Koreans were wearing shoes inside to clean it, which apparently is a big sign of how bad it was. They told me that the one guy who was cleaning will stop in the doorway when carrying in a heavy piece of furniture to take off his shoes, so him wearing them in here was fairly significant. I saw it after they had been cleaning for a while, and I wouldn't call it disgusting, but I've seen some pretty gross places. It was left with a bunch of crap everywhere.

Anyway, I start teaching tomorrow, which is also the first day of school for OSU...kind of ironic, don't you think? I'm a little nervous. There is another new guy who got here a couple hours before I did, and we are observing a class and then have to teach our own. On the upside, the classes we should have are beginning English kindergarten kids, so we don't have to do much, especially the first day, but the fact that they're going to be five and six is not helping here. We'll see how it goes.

So far it's been pretty busy for me. I've been staying with Gayle, one of the other teachers, and I've been pretty much doing stuff ever since I got here. It's nice, and she's paid for everything so far - it's like a pay it forward to the newbies - but I've had a total of maybe an hour and half to myself.

Anyway, I need to go to bed, as I'm still trying to catch up on sleep from the way over here. 12 hour flight, plus a two hour layover, plus a three hour flight, and then a half hour taxi ride. Yuck. I have a couple of pictures of random stuff that I'll post tomorrow if the internet holds.

Night. :)

Hmmm...

Alright, I'm very bad at this whole blog thing. In case you missed that. I'm trying again though. ;)

Well, if you haven't heard, I am going to South Korea for a year to teach English. Why, as everyone keeps asking me? Why not? It pays well, I get to see Asia, and it delays the real world for another year. I found out this summer that what I thought would be my perfect career is...not. So I'm back at not knowing what I really want to do, and I couldn't find a job that I liked. After thinking about it, I figured why get a job that I don't even like while I'm applying for it, just because I'm broke, when I could go teach in Korea instead. So, there you have it.

I'm teaching at a private school, where I'll have kids from 5-15. They pay for my airfare, my one-bedroom apartment, and I get a month pay as a bonus at the end of the year. It's a pretty good deal, and I'm hoping to save a lot of money for those pesky student loans. I'm also hoping the year will help me see the light of what to do with my life and all.

Anyway, I'm in Los Angeles right now, waiting to leave. I had to come here for my visa interview, which was really dumb because the interview only lasted about 45 seconds, yet I had to come and do it in person. At least the school is paying for my hotel room because they wanted me to stay and pick up my visa as soon as it's ready, and then leave from here. My flight leaves at noon on Thursday, and I get into Seoul at 9pm on Friday. (Ick for time differences. On the upside, when I return, I'll get in two hours after I leave, by local times)

So that's it...expect pictures and more to follow!

Well, I'm going to try at least. :)

She's back....

I know, I've been MIA, but in my defense, I was with my mom for six weeks and she has...dial-up! The horror! (Yes, I've been off dial-up for a month now, but let's not get technical).

I've uploaded my Greece pictures and will post on that adventure next time.

As for me, I've had a change in plans. I seem to like that. :) I decided, after careful thought and consideration, that I shouldn't study in Puerto Rico. My Spanish was not at a level where I could take normal classes, in a normal university, in a new dialect, and not fail horrifically. So I changed my ticket and am going for 10 days in December with my dad to meet the family and see where he was born, where he went to school, etc. Bonus: I should miss all the hurricanes.

So I'm back in Corvallis and at OSU. Now I get to stretch out the remaining credits I need to graduate in three terms instead of two, so I have quite the senior schedule lined up, as it should be.

Other than that, not much going on. Graduation is in the future and kind of scares me...I've had this professional student thing working out pretty well, it'll be weird to not be one. Then I might actually have to be an adult! Ugh. What fun is that?

:)

Anica
(Whose adventures will probably be fairly boring from here on out, but hey, at least I'm cute.) :)

Well my bags are packed, I'm ready to go...

I leave Santander tonight, heading on the night train to Madrid to catch my flight to Athens tomorrow. It's hard to believe. Jackie, the first in the group to be taking off, is leaving on the 7pm train (her flight leaves for the US at 6am tomorrow). I am going to help her take her suitcases down to the taxi stop in about ten minutes, and it is pretty bizarre.

It's going to be weird to leave here. I've been here two and a half months, and I am really used to it. A guy asked me for directions yesterday, and I knew where he was going and could give them to him. (Although it ended up being in English. I started in Spanish but was trying to explain a turn-around, since I don't know the word for it, and he said I could speak to him in English. At least he didn't ask me in English to begin with, so maybe my neon "American" sign is dimmer now after all.)

I miss home. I miss the US, I miss English, and I really miss the food. But a lot of things about here have become normal now, like eating lunch (disgusting as it may be) at 2:30pm, or walking everywhere.

I don't know, but I'm still really excited to be leaving, and going to Greece. I am going to walk on the island that is the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis. And I lived in a foreign country with a foreign language for almost three months. It's pretty crazy.

Signing off for the last time in Europe (this time around at least),
Anica