Crystal Rooms and Cat Cafes

So we were in Seoul last weekend and knew that we wanted to stay at a jjimjilbong for the night. Now a jjimjilbong is similar to a spa. The one we stayed in is called Dragon Spa and it's the most famous in Seoul. For foreign travelers the price is hard to beat and this one was about $15 per person. That included saunas, spa baths, and sleeping "arrangements." Dragon Spa had 7 floors and was huge. We didn't visit everything there, but it also has a movie theater, gold, swimming pool, big arcade, restaurant, concession stand, massages, and more. When we first got there we paid our money and received gender specific shorts and a t shirt, along with a bracelet with a key on it. Then you have to take your shoes off in this entryway and store you shoes in a personal locker. Now you are in the no-shoe zone and they mean business! It's considered very rude to wear your shoes on floors that are in this zone (including anyone's house in Korea). J and I had to part ways after this point because the men and women's spa areas were on different floors. We were to each do our thing and then meet back up in the communal areas to check out the sleeping rooms.

J at the entrance to Dragon Spa

There was this nice American girl from Wisconsin that noticed my deer-in-the-headlights looks and heard J and I speaking, and said that she would show me around in the women's area. She showed me where I could buy things like shampoo, toothpaste, or a facial mask and took me to my second locker (where my purse and clothes were stored). Then she said I had to get completely undressed and shower before I got into the spa baths. Then she left and went back downstairs. I think that if I had gone with a female friend I would've been a little less self-conscious because I had no one to talk to in the baths. My locker was right next to 5 Korean girls so I had an audience too while changing. Haha. They give you this little bitty towel to take to the baths with you that does nothing to protect your modesty. I guess Koreans are used to communal baths and are more comfortable with nudity. So first you have to shower in these communal showers and make sure you're clean when you enter the spa waters. And I also heard that you shouldn't get your hair wet in the baths. It's a pretty cool area. There are numerous different baths you can get in, all in ascending temperatures. You are meant to spend about 5-10 minutes in each and you can go from the coolest to the hottest or the warmest or the hottest to the coolest. Then on an open-air pavilion there are 3 more baths. A children's warm bath, a ginseng bath, and a cedar bath (I think). After getting too hot by all of these I took a dunk in the coldest bath there was!

If you need to buy any items like shampoo or water from the downstairs concession area you just swipe your bracelet and it charges your key number. Then when you check out you just pay for everything you buy. It's so easy not to have to worry about carrying around money. When J and I met up about an hour later in the communal areas we were beat so we decided to check out the sleeping rooms. Now, I had no clue about how it was setup or anything beyond seeing the huge dim room where there were about 100 Korean gals and guys in their teens and 20s sleeping on the stone floor. J asked me if I wanted to sleep in the curry spiced room or the hot room. I thought he was joking and when I found out that he wasn't, got stressed out because there were so many choices and I was so tired!

So, first, in the big communal sleeping room there are nice smooth stone floors (remember, they're clean because everyone is in socks or bare feet) that people literally pick a random spot and lay down. Some people had towels that they laid on but most were just on the bare floor. We had to hunt to find the pillows offered. These pillows were rectangle blocks that were cushioned but not lushly cushioned at all. The hardness stopped me from sleeping on my stomach because the pillow wouldn't compress and squish. Needless to say I didn't get much sleep from the uncomfortable floor and the 5 random girls talking loud right by our heads after about 2 hours of sleep. After telling them to go away somewhere else to talk I woke J up and told him that sleeping was next to impossible for me and that I was so sore. I managed to find a massage chair against the wall that was slightly more comfortable and slept for a few more hours there fitfully. J went off to a few of the other rooms to rotate between warm rooms, hot rooms, and cold rooms (this is the sleeping process that a lot of people do).

So, the curry room. Well, apparently they had dried herbs hanging up that gave it that smell and the room was super hot. It was too hot for me to sleep in so I didn't go in that one. Then there was the salt room. That one was pretty cool because there were these large salt crystal rocks (about the size of half a golf ball) that were all over the room about 6 inches deep with walkways in the middle of the room. There was one girl lying directly on the beautiful pink salt rocks curled up on her side. Her friends were on a sheet laid over the rocks chatting. The salt room was "L" shaped and more people were at the other end of the room. J and I went to that side for about 30 minutes to try to sleep but it was so warm it made it difficult. The cool thing about the room is that the stone pathway and the salt rocks were heated. The stone path was so heated you didn't want to stand in one place for too long. In the middle of the room were these 3 red glowing short arched hive-looking doorways. They were so interesting looking that we had to investigate. It was so unusual and weird! You crawl in through the half door and the lights were very dim with a red rope of Christmas lights strung around the nook. It was more salted floors and enough space to sleep about 5 people in each an archway "bed area." So dang interesting.

Another awesome room was the crystal room. I call it that because this small, king bed-sized room had a low ceiling that was studded with clear crystals the same size as the pink salt rocks from the previous room. The walls were studded too but the floor was normal wood flooring. A truly crystal room! Mystical people would have a field day with this place. I guess this was the energy room and it was also heated. I think the purpose of these rooms is to heat your body up and then go to the ice room to expel the pollutants from your pores. So next we ventured into the ice room. As he opened the door, J said to me, "are you ready for this?!" Haha. When first stepping inside we found ourselves in a medium-sized foyer area. One pretty heavyset guy was sleeping on a bench along one of the walls. We went past him and opened the second door. Both rooms were cold, but the second room was definitely the coldest! There were benches along 3 walls of the room and in 2 corners there were snowmen made out of what looked to be real snow. This room felt wonderful for about 4 minutes for me after having been sleeping in the hot salt room. J stayed a little longer than I did and went back for more later that night after I moved onto the massage chair to sleep.

There were a few other normal temperature but smaller sleeping rooms but they were full of people so we didn't really venture into them. I really like the experience of the jjimjilbong as a whole, but I won't go again expecting to get much sleep. I think next time I will be better prepared and try to see if the spa rents actual mats to sleep on and bring my own travel pillow. I did bring an eye mask with me and was glad for it, but next time I'll bring earplugs.

On Sunday it was very rainy so we decided to meet up with my friend, C, and his wife, H. We went to this shopping district called Myeongdong, which was really cool because barely any cars were allowed in the area and it was all walkable. There were tourism people who worked for the shopping center out one the streets giving maps to people and assisting them with directions. The guy who helped us had the best English that we've heard spoken here so far! He was such a big help. The storefronts were all about 5 stories high and with the semi-wide streets it made for a very cool area to do some shopping with good names brand stores. I even saw a Roxy shop down the street but we didn't manage to go there. We met C and H at the cat cafe that I had heard was in Myeongdong. As we stepped in the door you have to stop at this small foyer area, take off your shoes, and put on the slippers provided. The door lady also squirted your hands with hand sanitizer as we passed her. Their cats sure did look fat and healthy, though! We had to pay a $7 entrance fee but that price included a drink of your choice. J got coffee and I got the peach tea, which was delicious. There were about 20 cats roaming around the place and sleeping. There were also some rules posting that said such things as not to bother any cats that were sleeping, don't pat or spank the cats on the flank/behinds, don't touch their bellies, and don't pick them up at all. I think if you were sitting down and they wanted to climb on your lap that was okay. But the thing is that no cat wanted to do that. I like the idea of a cat cafe but with all full-grown cats who are pet on a continuous daily basis, these cats just don't want to be touched. You could tell in the way they'd arch their backs down and scurry away as I tried to stroke their backs. Ingrates! They weren't skittish, they just were bothered by tons of people everyday. I think the cafe would work better if they had mainly baby and juvenile kittens. One attendant spread some wet cat food on the backs of J and my hands and this one cute Abyssinian cat went to town on it. I did buy some fish treats at the suggestion of another attendant and this one enormous cat stalked our table to try to eat all of it. He was so cute. By and far, though, it was a fun time playing with the cats.

That's it for now, folks. Be sure to check out the photos below.

Me with the stylish sandals

Grumpy face

This was such a beautiful cat

What a chubster

They both have disdainful looks on their faces. Haha

Seoul in a Heartbeat

So it seems like it's been raining every dang weekend for the past 2 months! This past weekend we got tired of being forced to stay in and not get outside, that when we got off work last Friday we were racking our brains for something that we could do. We finally decided that riding the KTX would be a fun experience. I'd never been on one before and J had the last time he was here in Korea. Next we needed a destination. We saw that the train ran all the way diagonal across Korea, from Busan (the lower east corner) to Seoul (the upper west corner). So Seoul it was! 

Tickets on the KTX weren't too horrible (about $60 per person one way). And the train's pretty fast too. It can reach speeds of up to 185mph! That's why I really wanted to ride on it. I wanted to see what the countryside looked like going that fast. The train is actually called a bullet train and works electromagnetically. It cuts the normal travel time almost in half.

So all of this was decided Friday night around 10 or 11pm and we booked train tickets for around 9am the following morning in Busan, a 1hr bus ride away from where we live. Needless to say, we didn't get much sleep that night (< 3 hours for me and zero for J!), with watching episodes of Dexter on Netflix and Joshua saying "one more, Teacher?" every time we finished one. Haha. There's a local bus that runs from our home to Busan numerous times every day but you can't get tickets until it's the day you want to travel. And these puppies sell out quick. So we woke up at 5:30am and J went down to buy us tickets for a 6:20am bus ride. At this point, though, we didn't feel the lack of sleep yet. The KTX was nice and convenient but I wasn't really impressed with the speed. It seems like it never got up to top speed for us. Oh well.

Now Seoul is the capital of South Korea and there are tens of millions of people living in the city alone.  The subway is the main way of getting where you want to go and it's actually not super hard to figure out. As long as you know what stop you need you can get anywhere. It's pretty cheap too. In Busan we can get a subway day pass for about $3, but we didn't see that Seoul offered the same day pass. So those subway ventures turned out to be about $1.50 per person per destination. All in all, the subway probably only cost us about $15 total for the weekend. One night we stayed out past midnight wandering around and hadn't realized that the subway closed after 12am and had to get a cab to our jjimjilbong. That was a $15 cab ride!

When we first got into the city we wanted to take a tour of one of the four palaces in the city. In ancient times (and up until the early 1900s) the King and Queen and other royalty would call all of these palaces home. The one we went to is called Changdeokgung (창덕궁). On another note, I have learned the Korean alphabet and can phonetically read the Korean characters! I only still have a little bit of trouble with the "w" vowels.

Crossing the threshold of the main gate into the Palace with the Throne Room in the background

It's hard to make out the left pathway, but there's a middle, a left, and a right pathway. Only the royal family could walk on the elevated middle pathway. High officials walked on the right and left pathways, and subordinates off of the path completely on either side. Needless to say, both J and I walked on the middle path!

Beautiful painted wood that only royal buildings could have. The paint kept out bugs and actually protected the wood.

Peekaboo with hidden entrances

One of the buildings in the Secret Garden

(which actually covered a HUGE expanse of land)

Two dragons on the underside of a pagoda in the garden.

J walking through the doorway from the men's living and 

sleeping quarters into the women's. Watch out!

The Cottonwood is blooming and feels like clouds on earth.

Watching it continually fall from the trees was beautiful.

We were thoroughly exhausted of walking after this 2 hour long tour so we wandered around the streets and found ourselves an hour away from the first lantern street parade/festival for Buddha's Birthday. His birthday is actually May 6, but the celebrations started the Saturday that we were there. After sitting on a curb for a while waiting, I walked to get us something hot to drink. While I was gone J helped parade volunteers move some chairs in exchange for them letting us sit in the front row right on the side of the parade route. So we got a great view of everything!

This lantern was given to me by a parade attendant. A nice Korean lady on the street gave me another more beautiful one but I had to leave it behind because it was too big and unwieldy. 

Buddhist Monks chanting

This is actually a true swastika, not to be confused with the Nazis. This is called a Manja in Korea and it's backwards from the Nazi-used swastika. It's a symbol of good fortune.

That's it for tonight, folks. J wants to watch more Dexter episodes so I'll finish the second half of the blog tomorrow. I'll explain about what's this jjimjilbong that we stayed in Saturday night is. And about the cat cafe we visited Sunday!

Long time gone

My apologies to everyone who's been reading our blog. It has been over a month now since the last post. When B last posted, she did very well in posting two blogs to share what's been happening. I was recovering from a butt-kicking respiratory infection during that time and promptly found another, lesser respiratory infection in early March that left me rather unmotivated to post a blog. Spring has sprung though and my motivation has picked back up.

March was also topsy-turvy with restructuring/reorganizing of the school we are teaching at. There were previously two schools; one here in Okpo and the other in Gohyeon. The school in Gohyeon was closed rather unexpectedly and thus with little prior notice. Though they had to leave Geoje, this presented the wonderful opportunity for us to become great friends with the two teachers there. Two beautiful souls that B and i have been immediately magnetized to. I am really looking forward to future time spent with such serene and kindred spirits during this path through the universe we're all on together.

Speaking of paths…and Spring, we took an invigorating half day trip over to Jangseunpo (a short 20 minute ride by public bus for 1200 won-about $1.15 each). We had previously walked this seaside path with two university students before they left for other parts of the country for their first semester of college. As it speaks a thousand words, i'll spare the description and show you why it will be worth a second trip: Here's 5000 words worth. More below.

Notice the green path, it is the very nice recycled rubber that provides a slightly springy step which is nice on the joints.
Second, notice the lovely lady on the path, she provides great laughs, wonderful company, adds to the view, and is one of a kind.
Then, above her to draw out all the beauty of nature, the Sakura (or Japanese Cherry) in full bloom.
There were also the daffodils, great vistas of the East Sea, islands in barely visible in the sunny haze, the stark contrast of sea green to white rocks, then on to evergreen forest of cedar.
The sweet mingled scent of flowers blooming all around and green life spring out from the rainy weekend and glorious days of sunshine filled the air on the whole walk.

When we got back to Okpo, I was aching for a fresh salad, a crisp drink, and a little protein. We found the perfect little sandwich shop that offers up a grilled chicken salad. They had the most amazing caesar dressing, chilled olives, a dollop of potato salad, sliced cucumber, a cherry tomato, and two delicious chicken breast grilled with black peppercorn to perfection. We shared this with a sandwich with chicken, cold lettuce, a large slice of real mozzarella, tomato, and a very light olive oil. The salad and sandwich was preceded by a small whole grain loaf of warm, delectable bread with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Mouth is watering now just thinking about it. We also shared cold water and I had chilled Thai beer. Perfect food harmony was achieved.

Ok, I want to keep this short and readable so I'll wrap it up. My plan is to post shorter blogs more frequently. I am still slowly gathering and converting a list of commonly purchased items to show the cost of living here. More soon. Thanks for reading.

Find and forever follow your personal bliss.

Photo Blog

 J and I heard loud drumming coming from the street about 2 weeks ago and went outside to find this mini parade. I think they were welcoming the Lunar New Year by going around to most businesses and singing and drumming to them for about 5 minutes

Bungeoppang on the street corner. It's a fried dessert with a cream filling. We got this after we went see the new Frozen movie

The neighborhood of Gohyeon and mountains in the background

 We haven't eaten here yet but want to try it! I think it's just a Korean barbecue place

 My 14 year old kids are writing essays in my Writing Class and will present them in J's Speech Class. I helped one boy brainstorm ideas on his superhero that he had to invent. My example is at the top

 This is from tonight's class. We read a passage and there are usually a lot of new words for the kids. To make it easy, I write the Korean word on the board for each English word. This is an example of Korean characters. I'm getting faster at writing them and sounding them out. One of the students wanted to get in on the photo too!

Fellow = saram

Election = seongeo

Sculpture Park and P.O.W. Camp

A few weekends ago, J and I hung out with two of our college-aged female students, Hui Su (he-sue) and Da Young (dah-yung). We met them in the morning and took a local bus to the nearby village of Jangseuongpo. They said that we were going to go for a hike, but it was really a stroll on the city and country roads. We first went almost straight up this one road because the incline was so severe. J laughed at us after the first 5 minutes, because the three of us girls were chatting and charging up the hill not realizing how fast we were going. Then we got tired and had to slow to a mere slog. After leaving the city area we came around a bend in the road and saw wonderful views of the coast. It was so gorgeous but these photos can't do it justice. It was icy cold and so windy from the coast! It would've been awesome to have been down on the shore and see the waves crashing against the rocks. We forgot the name of the little island in this first photo. I tried to capture it in the photos but failed, but the sun kept shining through the clouds like a spotlight on the waves and lighting up a section of them. It was so beautiful because it made the water glow like molten silver.

We turned left after this view and walked down a country road following the coast. I can't wait to go back in the spring and summer because the sidewalk was lined with Japanese Cherry Blossom trees. I will post a blog about that in a few months. There was a nice sidewalk to get away from the traffic and outdoor workout equipment along the way. Workout equipment here in Korea in nice because they put the machines in convenient places that people go to walk or exercise (on mountain tops too!). I've seen equipment like this before in the US, but only a few pieces at each park. Here, they put about 5-10 machines at each place that they are putting the equipment. When we hiked Guksabong (bong means mountain) they had such cool machines to help you stretch and exercise. I will do a blog about that one day too.

Da Young, Hui Su, and J

So we walked for a long time along this road and coastline, maybe 45 minutes, until we came to a sculpture park. I'm not sure if the park commemorated anything or had any special meaning, but it was pretty cool. Of course, the first thing that caught my eye was the funky bathroom!

It's a snail with a fountain on the right (shaped like a black seal with a blue ball)

I bet this park will be a perfect place to come and read on the grass this summer

The village/city of Neunpo in the background

Korean graffiti

Hui Su and Da Young wondered why I stopped to take a photo of this, but I thought it was cool. I could make a stab at translating the characters, but to my eyes it doesn't follow the rules of the Korean language. I am beginning to learn the Korean characters and almost have the alphabet down-pat! Pronunciation is next.

After we left the sculpture park we went down into another village that was near the park, called Neunpo. We got some delicious food that we all shared, but I forgot to take a photo of our food. It's considered nice to share food because it means that you are eating with friends, and don't you sometimes share your food to some extent with friends or your significant other. Then we took two busses to get to Gohyeon, which was maybe 25 minutes away. The girls thought (rightly so) that we should see the P.O.W. camp while we were living in Korea. They wanted us to know their history and the horrors of the war. J has personally (I think for school) done extensive researching on the Korean War, but I was almost ignorant of ANYTHING besides knowing that there was a war in Korea by that name! It was very enlightening for me and sad to see the truth of what happened and I went home after it and did my own research on the war. 

This is what Wikipedia had to say about Geoje Island-- "Out of a total of 170,000 prisoners of war about 85% were from North Korea, and the rest from China. The (camp) is meant to be reminiscent of the daily lives of the prisoners. The theme stresses the humane treatment of the internees."

The P.O.W. camps were all over the area that we live in now, Okpo, and far beyond that. While at the park, we also saw an interactive movie with shaking seats and, supposedly, wind (which I didn't feel). The movie showed a story about two soldier friends from North Korea who fought in the war. It was sad because one of the young soldiers dies in the end right in front of his mother just as he was about to escape the camp. He was an anti-communist living in a communist camp and was being helped by the American and South Korean soldiers to escape this very communist camp and get to another camp (nearby) that was anti-communist. There were many, many different camps in this area. Maybe 100 or so guys to each camp. Alliances began to form very quickly in each camp and blood ran hot, so each camp became either anti-communist or pro-communist. The North Koreans and Chinese living in these camps would kill each other if they weren't in agreement with them. Also the North Koreans and Chinese were extremely divided about repatriation. The pro-communists wanted to be repatriated to their home country after the war, meaning they wanted to go home. The anti-communists knew they couldn't go back after being so outspoken against communism and they didn't WANT to go back to North Korea/China, so they were against repatriation and many stayed in South Korea or other countries after the war. So this young soldier was murdered by his fellows North Koreans while escaping over the barbed wire tall fence. Of course, this movie was just a fictionalized drama about the war, but I think it still captured the tone of what was going on in the camps at the time.

And now, ziplines! "What do ziplines have to do with a P.O.W. camp?" you might ask. Well, apparently during the war some prisoners attempted an escape from one of the camps. It didn't work, but today we have the pleasure of going on an awesome zipline tour right inside a P.O.W. camp. I tried to get Da Young to give it a try, and after I agreed to go first, she said that she would do it. J also tried it but Hui Su couldn't be convinced to go on it. It was pretty cool and had some actual drops on it. I've been on one other zipline, but I've never heard of a zipline having drops on it like a roller coaster. It was slightly sketchy when I'd zip around a corner and a tree limb would be maybe 4 feet away from me. I tucked my legs in under me after that because a broken leg is never fun. I can see my mom cringing at this point and my dad laughing. We thought the cost for the tour was 9,000 won ($9), but their machine that allowed automatic retrieval of the gear was broken, so it was free if we carried our harness and 5 pound gear back up to the start of the tour. I think it was worth it!

 And, yes, that IS a wobbly step stool that we launched from!

I asked the attendant guy if I could jump off of the stool to get some speed but he said no, and to just sit and go.

B and Da Young