"the jimjil-bong"

february 19th-23rd - my birthday weekend - "the jimjil-bong"

My friend Marissa came to visit me, incidentally also the weekend of my birthday. Yes, she literally "flew to Korea for the weekend." We tried to fit in as much as possible and ended up having an absolutely awesome time, of course. I went to my first jimil-bong. Think Korean spa/bathhouse. We went to one of the most well-known in Seoul, near Yongsan yok (yok=station). I had heard a bit about these jimjil-bongs before trying it out this particular weekend. They are famous for a few things, especially among foreigners, that I can't really mention in my blog. Hmmmm... Needless to say, it had perked my interest far before this February venture five-months into my time here. But as it turned out, I really had no idea what I was in for.

the jimjil-bong process:
Step 1: Pay $10,000 won (7 bucks).
Step 2: Receive your new swipeable locker-key-bracelet and Dragon Hill spa oversized cotton t-shirts and shorts.
Step 3: Take off your shoes, obviously. Put them in the shoes closet.
Step 4: Find your locker number. This might be the trickiest step of all.
Step 5: Change... into your bracelet.
Step 6: Buy shampoo and other shower products at the desk to get ready to lather. (Swipeable bracelets for purchasing are very handy, but dangerous.)
Step 7: Walk downstairs to high-pressure amazing shower, then sauna hop from pool to pool of different temperatures. Some are pumped from deep underground, I hear. Remember, you are only wearing your bracelet at this point, and feeling a bit self-conscious as a foreigner amongst skinny, naked Korean women. (Children, moms, grandmothers... It's a family affair.)
Step 8: Keep jumping from pool to pool! Walk under random lone shower heads with pull cords, pull, and be shocked. Try exceptionally hot sauna rooms and jump back in the pools. Rinse, lather, repeat. Too fun.
Step 9: When you've seen all there is to see on the women-only floor, don your comfy spa clothes back at the lockers. Now it's time to explore the coed areas. All rooms include heated floors, and everyone walks around in their spa clothes, towels on their heads, with a very relaxed air about them. You can watch a magic show, or TV. You can watch people ride mechanical horses in the gym. You can bake like bread in the oven room, or freeze your nips off in the cold room. There's also an outside spa, and various other rooms that I missed. You can eat snacks, get a body scrub, or go up to the sky garden for lunch and beers outside on the roof. You can grab a pillow and take a nap on the heated floor in a room pumped full of pure oxygen. Wow.

I'm not sure if you can really picture it, but I hope you're getting that it's more like an amusement park with naked sections. I loved it, and feel like I could go back a bunch and keep discovering more rooms and pools of varying hotitude and colditude. I'm also interested in the body scrub, but I hear it's very, very rough, designed to peel off your skin basically. Anyways, it's also open 24 hours a day, so I can go back anytime.


my "did-you-know?" for this blog:

One can send a postcard from South Korea to the other side of the world for almost half the cost it would be to send a postcard down the street in the U.S. Astounding.


february 27th - graduation day and new classes:

This is the day my kindergartners graduated from their hagwon. March is the beginning of the new school year here. My main morning class had been in kindergarten for three years already at this point, so it was now time for them to begin elementary school at a Korean public school. Most of these children will return in the afternoons now after they are done school to keep up with their English lessons as well. (Some are as young as five years old and attend school for a minimum of 7 hours a day. Many of my students also went to an art school, math school, swimming class, tae kwon do lesson, music lesson, and/or also had an English tutor in their homes in the evenings.) I watched them graduate with mixed feelings, as I'm sure is natural for any teacher at the end of the school year. I was ready for a fresh start with new kids but also felt like we had just started getting comfortable with each other.

Graduation Day also means that I have new kids now. There is a drastic difference in their English abilities. My previous core class had been in English classes five hours a day, all week long, for three years since they were Western age 4. These new kids are six years old and have never had a day of English classes in their lives. It's mentally exhausting in a whole new way. I can't have a conversation with these kids like I could before. We are using a lot of charades and pointing so far. It's cute in some ways, as most of my kids can only say "May I go to the bathroom, please?", and some can barely say that. Fortunately, I've had some practice with this type of communication style with some new Korean friends and acquaintances and am becoming accustomed to communicating with a drastic language barrier.

I also switched subjects. I used to be a language arts teacher, and now I am a math/science/social studies teacher. I much prefer it to the other. It's so much more fun to teach farm animals and types of clothing than to teach phonics and grammar, and easier too, I think.

So that's my core class that I have most of the morning, from 9am til 2pm, but I also switch for one period with my partner teacher who teaches my kids language arts. I teach her class of babies for an 80-minute session as well. I say babies because they really are babies! Korean age five equals about 3 and a half to four years Western age. I spend half the class chasing them down the hallways because they're little runners. I mean, they're small, barely potty-trained. Think of how large your vocabulary is at age four as well, and now they're learning another language. It's like babysitting four toddlers but also trying to teach them a second language. They're sooooooooo damn cute, but definitely a handful. (Check out my pictures of GDA kids thus far in my new slideshow.)


march 1st

There are woods behind my house. I can walk two blocks, hike up some stairs on a hill and be on a hiking trail within minutes. This Sunday, I hiked to E-Mart. E-Mart is a sort of Target but with multiple floors and ramp-like escalators for your shopping carts. It's a great place to go get some foreign food items, but no matter what you go in for, you always end up inside for hours. I was broke at the time, (big surprise), but left E-mart with a full belly from eating so many samples. They have samples of EVERYTHING. I literally tried about forty food and beverage items, including heineken and bananas, as if I had forgotten what either of these tasted like... Then I took a cab home. Best hiking trip ever.


how to make friends with taxi drivers:

Always have a treat in your back pocket, so-to-speak. For me, I have chosen the tactic of saying "Adashi, mi-guk saram gum? Ma-shee -seh-yo!" This means, "Sir, American person gum? Delicious!" (Yes, my Korean is terrible.) This generally makes them smile though. To date, I've only had one taxi driver turn me down. Most pop it in their mouth instantly and start chomping away. It really is so much better than Korean gum, much more flavorful and long-lasting. I've been able to enjoy very pleasant cab rides because of these gum offerings and left many a cabbie with a salivating smile.. It's such a silly small thing but having a buttered-up taxi driver makes all the difference, sometimes the difference of being dropped off in the right place or not. (So if you want to send me a package... *wink, wink,* please send my favorite gum! Trident citrus twist. K, thanks. :)


P.S. The exchange rate is getting a little better... Shhhh, *knocks on wood.*