It's SO COLD!!

I'm having a hard time writing because the draft through my window is so bad. It snowed like crazy today! It was beautiful, but freezing (literally)!

I had a short vacation last weekend, I went to hot springs out in the country, in a small town called Suanbo.

When we first arrived we decided to walk around and get to know the area a bit. We ended up walking down this street of venders. Old ahjimas (old ladies) sat in their booths waiting for someone to buy something. It's interesting, they sell the same thing in their booths. You would think to get better business you would go away from your competitors, not set up camp next to them. We were looking at some rather odd dried fruit, trying to figure out what it was, when the ahjima came out and handed us a sample. It tasted like a pumpkin and has seeds similar to a pumpkin, but it was definitely not a pumpkin. We're still not sure what kind of fruit it was. After we bought a bag of the fruit from her, another ahjima came out of a "restaurant". I put restaurant in quotes because it was a tent with tables in it. She had giant spoon full of white liquid and she just made us drink it. Not wanting to offend her, I drank some and turns out it was makali. It's a rice liquor that's lightly fizzy and milky in texture. Normally, I'm not it's biggest fan, but this was the best makali I've ever had. It was incredibly smooth and had an early, but sweet taste. Yum. Then she made us eat what I was pretty sure was acorn jelly, but it was slimy and a little sour and didn't leave a good taste in your mouth. After she spoon fed us more makali she asked us to come in her restaurant to try more. We weren't hungry then, but we told her (in body language since we didn't know Korean and she didn't know English) we would go back later. We didn't actually go back, the others were afraid the food wouldn't be clean enough for our constitutions. They might have been right, but I felt bad for not going back. We tried to pay her for the food she gave us, but she wouldn't take our money.

When you think hot springs, you think of natural pools of bubbling water set in the middle of a quiet picturesque natural scene - that's what I thought, too! Not in Korea. Here, they take water from natural hot springs and feed it into the saunas. My friends and me didn't want to go all that way to not sit in spring water, so we went anyways. The saunas here are interesting, they're separated by men and women, you strip down till you standing proud in what the good Lord gave ya. You strut around, wash your hair and go from warm pool, to burning hot pool, to hot steam room, to cold pool, to standing hot shower, to standing cold shower, back to the steam room with a cold towel, to sitting down shower, and back to the hot shower to once again wash your hair. Not everyone does it in that order, but I wanted to give you an idea of how many ways you can bath and relax naked in these places. My favorite pool was extremely hot, and almost too hot to sit in. However, it was outside which made the temperature much more tolerable. We were up on a hill and it was nighttime, so we got to see the city lights below while we were....yes, stark naked. I never thought seeing a beautiful view naked is just as nice (if not better) as seeing it clothed.

Later that night, we had my most favorite dinning experience I've had yet. We didn't know where to eat, but the boys wanted western style seating; we went into the closest one. It also had a picture of pheasant on the outside which is something we all wanted to try. Frank, Max, and I ordered a 50, 000 won (50$) pheasant special. First they brought out all the side dishes. There was maybe three kinds of kimchi (of course), radishes, some dried fish, some stringy mushroom type food that tasted like fish, and other odd dishes we tried, but were happy not to eat more of. Then they brought out pheasant shabu shabu. Shabu Shabu is delicious, it's a broth that you cook vegetables and meat in, right on the table. When you eat it with meat you let the meat sit in the broth for a bit so it cooks all the way through. I thought the same principle applied to pheasant - it didn't. The woman who helped run the restaurant came over and grabbed a piece of pheasant, swooshed in in the broth and said, "1,2,3..." dipped it in the sauce and fed it to me. It was cooked to medium rare perfection. The meat was so tender, and the dipping sauce (made of wasabi, sesame oil, onion, and soy sauce) created a combination of magic you can only taste yourself to understand. While we were finishing up the pheasant, they brought out a mystery meat (We couldn't determine what it was. It was a tiny ball, and had a cartilage-y texture and kind of purple gray in color.) that was cooked with garlic, carrots, and a few different types of peas. It wasn't my favorite, but it was pretty good. Then they brought out sweet and sour chicken and sashimi. The sashimi was delicious, it was cold and served with pears in a sweet, yet vinegary dressing on it. Then they brought out these horseradish noodles, that had chicken and cucumber mixed in. I'm not the biggest fan of horseradish, but I really enjoyed this dish. I think if I liked horseradish more, I would have loved it. Then they took away our Shabu Shabu and replaced with with red bulgogi. I got nervous, because even though my spice tolerance has gone up, food that is red almost always means certain pain and misery for my mouth. This bulgogi was almost sweet, I'm not sure where the red color was coming from, but that was possibly the best bulgogi I've ever had (sorry mom!). When we thought we were done, they brought out one more dish, soup. It had vegetables and what looked like the bone of our pheasant in it. It was spicy, but delicious. However, we were all so full we could only manage a small bowlful each. Kirsten didn't join in our mean because she has dietary restrictions (she only eats chicken and some fish out of the meats) had bean soup. When we ordered it the guy said, "No, very..." and he made the universal hand gesture for stinky. You know, when you plug your nose and wave your hand around.  We said it would be fine, but he was not kidding. We dubbed the soup, stinky feet soup. Kirsten wasn't crazy about the taste, (and neither was I) but all of the soup managed to get eaten. It was an interesting food experience. We left very happy campers, and would have happily paid more for the meal. We waddled home we were so full of food.

The next day we went on a "hike". There was a national park nearby, and it's one of the least visited parks in the country. Since it was a national holiday no one was working at the parks, nor could we read the signs for trails. Finally, some hikers pointed up a hill and said, "That way, to the right." We followed their directions and ended up just walking in a straight line through thorns and sticky dead-ish flowers. It wasn't a trail, but we prevailed (though three of us were grumbling and complaining, myself included). Once we had enough of the thorns we walked back down the hill, found a traditional burial mound, took pictures of a lovely farm country view, and tried as best we could not to get scratched by the thorns.

After the hike we decided to go sledding since we still had a lot of the day left. We knew there was a ski resort nearby, and they usually have sledding there. We had a lot of fun, and after many races (in which I won) we went into a small snack shop for some warm drinks. There was a family there and they wanted their kids to practice English. They had cups of silkworms which they offered to us to try. I had always wanted to try one. I decided I couldn't leave Asia without having at least ingested a few insects. It's not the complete insect, it's just the pupa of it, but it was gross. You take a bite and juice squirts in your mouth. Overall, it's not pleasant in either texture or taste. After we spoke for a little while we raced the kids down the hill (I still won most of the races haha!) and took a picture with the family.

After being cold for those few hours, we decided to warm up in the sauna in our hotel. They have these ahjimas there that (for a small fee) will scrub all the dead skin off your body. I heard good things about it, so Kirsten and I gave it a try. The women that scrub you are very intimidating, they are very strong from scrubbing using their muscles all day and they're also pretty much naked, too. Kirsten's ahjima had on a sheer bra and wrap around her waist. My ahjima had no bra and a sheer wrap around her waist. Then they take a small rough towel, put some soap on it and go to town. They scrub everywhere (minus the important crevices). You would think it's invasive or uncomfortable, but it's actually very relaxing. At first it was a but unsettling, not because a half-naked middle-aged woman was scrubbing me from head to toe, but because I had so much dead skin- I was embarrassed. The dead skin was coming off in little gray balls, but I didn't feel as bad about it when I realized Kirsten had just as much dead skin coming off as me. After they scrub your body with a towel, they rinse you off with warm water, and clean you with some soap. The soap is on this big luscious luffa and feels so soothing after having dead skin scrapped off you. When she put the soap on she gave me two slaps on each thigh, and two soft punches to the arches of my feet. Turned me over put the soap on gave me two slaps right under the butt cheeks and again lightly punched my foot. She rinsed me off, said thank you and that was that. I have no idea what the slaps were for, they did it to Kirsten, too. My skin has never felt better. It's been a week and my skin is still baby soft. If you ever go to Korea, it's definitely worth the experience.

That night we had a basic dinner (bibimbop and bulgogi) and decided to rest and play some cards.  After the sauna I wasn't feeling great, and towards the end of our game of hearts I threw up. Kirsten said I was the most graceful puker she's ever seen. I quietly got up, didn't make noise other than the sound of water hitting water, and came back out to finish the card game. I felt better after getting it out, but still didn't feel great - so I didn't stay for a second game. The next morning we went home. I sat in my apartment for about one hour before my friend asked if I wanted to go out. Knowing I still had one more day of freedom, I couldn't decline. We went for a few drinks, and then enjoyed some norebong (korean style karaoke). I stayed at her house because the subways were down and taxi's were expensive. They had some left over holiday food, which I loved eating. We has rice cake soup, korean pancake, bulgogi, kimchi, stir-fry, and chopche. It was the perfect ending to the most interesting Korean experience filled weekend.

Here's a link to some of the pictures from the weekend. There are also some pictures of friends and my students. No sauna pictures! I know you're all sad I didn't take any.

Click HERE