Jimjilbang

Today we all woke up bright and early to leave for the Jimjilbang, but in character, mom was running late :p After an awesome breakfast we left at 11:30 for Garden 5 Jimjilbang about an hour away in Seoul. I was pretty nervous to be completely naked and a foreigner, but it was something I had to try. It was weird because my own family hasn't seen me naked since I was little, but after only a week, my host family has! It was interesting. We got shampoo and stuff, went to our lockers, and just stripped. Everyone acted as if it were nothing. I did get many stares though because I was the ONLY foreigner. But you basically just walked around these series of rooms naked, showered off, got in a huge hot tub, then a cold tub, then a massager tub, then maybe the hot tub again. After we were all bathed we got to put on clothes! They were generic clothes that everyone wore at this jimjilbang and mine was brown and so was mom's. So we all went out to the sauna sort of place. It was a big common area in air conditioning where people slept, read, talked, ate, whatever. It had a cafe, a nail place, a free movie theater (with super comfy recliners) massage places, and everything. They had sauna ovens in the wall that about 2 people could crawl in and just sweat out all the bad toxins. They also had bigger themed rooms where you could sweat at different temperatures. It was really rather cool! It was an awkward experience at first, but I would definitely do it again! After, we met with my host dad and went out to dinner. It was a famous place that was very humble looking. You sat on the floor and had a little sort of stovetop on coals in front of you and cooked yourself. I had my first taste of soda since I left Pittsburgh there too! It was delicious and definitely felt traditional. We tried to go to Seoul tower after dinner, but they kept asking for my passport (which i don't keep on me). So we just left. Great day! Tomorrow we go to Insadong!