Catch-Up! Sorry it's been so long!

Well all, it's officially the new Lunar Year. It's been an eventful couple of weeks. Some leavings, some comings, and some fun all around.

Be prepared for a long one today because I've got a lot to catch up on.

THREE WEEKS AGO:

Van and Amy and I stopped into Hongdae and visited the Trick Eye Museum. There were signs to follow to get to it, for those of you in Korea who are curious to see it. Now, this place is really cool. There's artwork on the walls, but its painted so it looks 3D. You can take pictures of yourselves and it looks like you're in the paintings. There's a bunch of exhibits, some of them not exactly child-friendly, but most are just fine.

Here's a sampling of pictures from that:






















TWO WEEKS AGO:

Lunar New Year!!! A lot of the guys went on a ski trip for part of the weekend, so it was pretty quiet around Bucheon. It was apparently fairly cheap to do that, so if anyone's interested in doing something similar, it won't cost you an arm and a leg. You do have to know some Korean to organize it though and get the deals.

Anyway, in Bucheon a bunch of us went and had Indian food for dinner. Then we went to the local foreigner bar Rhythm and Booze and had drinks when the ski trip group came back. Work gave us all some amazing socks (so now we all match) and some wine (which we still haven't managed to finish off), though everyone is certainly trying. Somehow people keep bringing their bottles to mine and leaving them, so I keep ending up with more when I don't want it.

The Lunar New Year was great. We got to have Monday off, and so Beks, Amy, and I went shopping. We stopped by Myeongdong, but Forever 21 was closed there. The H&M was open, and I learned my sizes in Korea, so at least I know it's now possible for me to get clothes here. :)

ONE WEEK AGO:

I did something I thought I wouldn't do. After an amazing dinner with Monica, Van, and Amy of shabu shabu (a meat stew that later becomes a porridge - very homey and filling), we girls took of to the Jjimjilbang (찜질방) located near Homeplus.

A Jjimjilbang is the public, gender-segregated bathhouses in Korea. They're open all hours, and people do go there and sleep, meaning that they're often a cheap option for people stuck after the subways close. You go in, pay about 6,000 or 7,000 won, and they give you some clothes for the sauna and towels, as well as a locker. We had only intended to use the Sauna portion, which turned out to be pretty neat. After getting changed into the clothes, we went in to the room where loads of Koreans are spread out on towels in these matching sauna outfits like us, basking in the saunas or using the massage chairs. There were so many people hanging about there that it was somewhat like going to a swimming pool or beach in summer, except it was late at night on a friday on the 7th floor of a building.

The sauna area has treadmills and a noraebang (singing room) as well as professional massages too, but it's only 1000 won for 10 minutes in a massage chair, so we paid for those for twenty minutes and chilled out. The hot rooms themselves are really neat. They each have different themes, and they're domes with cool ceilings, except the one on the end which is hot pebbles inside a fake cave. We tried the hot pebble one, which hurts your feet walking but then feels really cozy, and then we went into one that was medicinal herbs. In that one, you're lying on a cloth circle which is over a bed of crushed herbs. Another one was charcoal and pine, but hot, that made me think of Colorado mountains in midsummer and made me a little homesick. The charcoal forms the dome and the pine is piled around the circle you lay in again. All these people lying around have their heads resting on wooden blocks, and some of the domes have built in televisions so you can watch while you lie about.

Another dome was violet quartz and green tea, and that was really soothing. The dome was the quartz, the lights were really low, and the tea tree so calming that we almost fell asleep. But that's when Monica decided to suggest we were all getting really sweaty and yucky and that it would be a good time to go to the other side.

Having previously said before that wasn't going to be in the plans, Amy and I were kind of hesitant, but at the same time we'd made it that far and Monica did have a point, and she also made water sound really appealing, so we braved it and went for it.

At jjimjilbangs you don't wear clothes in the water areas. This is because they're really really clean places, and any toxins on your clothes can get into the water. Also, if you wear a swimming costume, they're worried its because you might be carrying some disease, so everyone's wearing nothing as a show of good faith, and hey, it is a bath anyway, so...

We stripped off and felt completely awkward, paid a lady to help scrub us down (that's part of the deal here, and it's either the random stranger does it or your mates do, and that wasn't going to be an option), and then went and soaked in the baths. It doesn't take long to get over the fact you're not wearing anything. After all, no one else is, and you're all there for a bath, and you can fill your head with thoughts of Rome or topless sunbathing in Spain or anything else and get over it quickly enough. There were mothers there with small children they're scrubbing clean, and everyone's just chilled out.

There's a number of different pools, each with these giant floating teabags in them that make each one different. There was a ginseng one, and a medicinal one, a wormwood bath, and even one of coffee. They're all really nice, except the freezing cold pools which are there to wake you up again if you go into the boiling sauna rooms there. The sauna rooms are a little claustrophobic, but still nice at lower temperatures. They had one that was at 80 degrees celsius that could probably kill you, but we didn't try that one. For those of you who are functioning in Farenheit, 40 C is around 100 degrees F.

The ladies scrub you head to foot and make your skin really, really soft. It's really awkward but at the same time when you're done you feel cleaner than you have ever felt ever. We lounged around at the Jjimjilbang for about 3 hours, since we were all missing baths so much, and then proceeded, after our baths, scrubbing, sauna, and massages, to get back into our clothes and go in search of hot chocolate. Once you get over the initial shock factor, it's actually really fun, and Monica was right, it does bring people closer together, so maybe we'll even do it again. Haha.

AND FINALLY -- THIS WEEK:

This week was the final one of the term. It was both sad losing some kids and also happy (because some of them are nightmares), but overall it made for an interesting range of feelings. Some of the kids I'll have back, and the school isn't that big so we will see them around. Others are leaving now because school is starting again.

We also lost Samuel, whose year was up and who is going to Nepal. We will all really miss him. His leaving party lasted two days. He finally got on the subway to the airport today.

In his place, Iain has come back, our half Scottish, half Australian, who has spent the last term touring as much of the world as he can.

We didn't get any new teachers at Bucheon this term, so it's almost a little quiet. The buzz that was there when we were starting seems to be gone, and we're all settled in enough now that it's almost back to business as usual.

So on that note, readers, I leave you to it. I'll try and post more often when fun things happen. Thank you for reading and following me!

Until next time,
Sam