Water

Not too much to say about water in Korea. It's safe. I haven't heard of anybody getting sick. There are water purifiers everywhere and every convenience store sells bottled water.

According to Wikipedia, Korea does not fluoridate their water. If you don't know about water fluoridation, it's a bit of a controversial topic. Do some research. Here are two perspectives:
For: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation
Against: http://fluoride.mercola.com/

One interesting thing: Drinking fountains are reaaally uncommon. I don't think that I've actually seen a single one since I arrived in Korea. I'm not sure if there are any anywhere. You know what is really common, though? These metal cups. It seems like every single restaurant and cafeteria has them, and they're all identical. And they have UV sterilizers. I don't know much about them, but I will find out more soon.

This exact setup is eeeevvvveryywhere.

Also, Koreans hardly drink any water. And especially not at meals. I find it very strange.
I like water. I drink like two liters of water every day. Gotta maintain a clear stream ;)

물 (Mul) - Water
물 주세요. (Mul juseyo.) - Give me water, please. (This really is the polite way to ask for water.)
물 사랑해! (Mul sarang-he!) - I love water!

Yay water!

찜질방 (Jjimjilbang) - Naked Koreans and Wooden Pillows

So Jjimjilbangs. They're Korean spas where you go and shower, bathe, sleep, and wake up and shower and bathe again. All for about $8. Which seems like an awesome deal, (and it is) though you have to sleep on the floor. It's definitely not what I imagine when I think of a spa.

 So once you arrive, you pay and they give you a key. You take off your shoes, find your shoe locker, and leave your shoes there. Then you walk in to the gender-segregated locker rooms, put your things in a locker, and drop your pants. Everyone's doing it. No need to be shy. I was a bit shocked the first time, but at least on the men's side, Koreans seem to have no shame about being naked together.

So after undressing, you walk into the main room with lots of showers and tubs, and take a shower. On a side note, Koreans brush their teeth while showering. Like all of them always. Do you guys do that? I don't usually. It seems like a waste of water.

Anyways, you shower, and then hop into one of the tubs. It seems like there's a rather particular order in which you do these things, although there's a bit of variance from one Jjimjilbang to another. Usually, though, it works something like this. First, there's an aroma tub which is somehow scented with a whole slew of nice smelling things: roses, lavender, etc. Hang out there for a while, then move on to the massage jet tub, which is a little bit hotter and has seats with lower back jets. It's quite nice after a long day of carrying a backpack around. Then, if you are bold enough, there's the realllly hot tub which is maybe around 45C/115F. And then generally there's a larger pool with cold water. I'm not sure how cold exactly, but after a scolding hot bath, it feels pretty freaking cold. Then sometimes there's a rope in the middle of the room that drops water from the ceiling onto your head. It feels pretty good to stabilize your body temperature after going back and forth between hot and cold a few times.

The girls said that they even drank tea and put on a skin face mask while in the hot tubs. Fancy stuff.

So then you dry off and put on the clothes that they give you, which are actually pretty comfortable. If you want, there are usually several saunas of various temperatures and maybe a cold room, which you can hang out in. Or you can go to bed you've probably been walking all day and it's like 1:00 am.

The sleeping conditions are really less than ideal. Sometimes the floor is really hard. But the one that I stayed at this past weekend in Seoul was actually pretty comfortable. It had nice thick mats to sleep on. Although when I asked for a pillow and played charades with the woman for a minute to convey to her what a pillow was, she looked around, grabbed a wooden block and handed it to me, smiled and left.

Then, in the morning, you get up and do it all again. Except usually you use these sit-down showers and clean yourself more thoroughly. There's even this hand-scrubber-glove-sandpaper-thing that you use to peel off dead skin. Maybe a friend will help you get your back. It actually feels pretty great.

When I was in Busan, Dok-de insisted with his broken English that we do everything, at least the first day. It was pretty hard to disagree, not speaking Korean and all. But it was all fun. Of course, if you don't want to go the whole nine yards, you can just sleep and shower in the morning.

I'll definitely be visiting more Jjimjilbangs in the next few months. I think next time, though, I'll try to smuggle in a sleeping bag to sleep on. I'll let you know how it goes.

잘가! (Jalga - See you!)

First Field Trip

I've been really slacking on blogging. Sorry about that. College is busy.

So the week before classes started, we went on our first field trip to Inje, which is in the northeastern part of South Korea. All of the American and Korean students in the Global Village program went. We left from the University on Friday in two buses, and arrived about two hours later at the place where we would sleep that night. It was a modest guest house with one side for the girls and one for the guys. There was very little furniture; the rooms were very open to make as much space as possible for people to sleep on the floors. After we set down our things in the guest house, we got back on to the buses. One bus went white water rafting, and the other went to play paintball. Then we switched.

Paintball was much more violent. called "survival game" in Korean, was pretty intense. I had never played paintball before, but I had heard people talk about it. From what I had heard, the goal was to hit people in the body and avoid the head. This was the opposite. Only head shots counted. We suited up with fairly thick pants and shirts and a mask which, for some reason, only covered our faces, leaving most of the back of our heads exposed. Getting hit in the back of the head with paint balls really is not my definitions of fun. It was a bit exciting, sure. But I didn't like getting hit and I didn't like shooting at people, because I knew that it would probably hurt, even if I missed their heads.

I am so thankful that military service is optional in the United States.


White water rafting, though, was sweet! The people from our bus filled three boats, I believe, each of which had a guide who steered and gave us instructions. I don't think any of them spoke English, but there were lots of Koreans in our group who could translate. Most of the river was pretty calm, although there were definitely parts that were pretty wild. Big drops and lots of splashes. I enjoyed it for sure. And whenever two rafts approached one another, there were usually splash fights. It was all in good fun, but it got to be a bit cold after the first few times. At one point, we pulled over to a tiny little island in the river where there were rafts stacked up that people were using as a diving board. Front flips are great. So it was lots of fun. I would absolutely go white water rafting again. And after we got out of the water, one of the guides who was splashing us a lot came over and gave me a big bear hug. That was the first time someone hugged me in Korea.

Hugs are nice :)