South Korea - day 4

Day 4 Thurs 7/30
The jet lag really hit me today. I feel like I could sleep all day. Maggie dragged me out of bed at noon to go to lunch with her bosses. We went to a Korean restaurant and took off our shoes when we entered the restaurant. We sat on not so comfy sitting place mats and wore eating aprons. We ate duck that we cooked in front of us and wrapped it in lettuce. I learned that in Korea they calculate age differently then us. When you are born, you are born at year 1 and at the Chinese new year everybody ages a year. In Korea I am actually 23 instead of 21. For desert we had coffee with a creamer in it that was extremely hot. We took the rest of Maggie's stuff to be mailed home to the post office and went by her friends English academy to pick up the a phone to use for the trip. In the afternoon Maggie talked me into going to the jimjilbang, which was an experience to say the least. A jimjilbang is a place where Koreans hang out and it has about everything you could possibly need. When you go in, you pay eight dollars and are given a towel, a locker key, and some pajamas. As you enter the locker room, you find naked Korean women. Everywhere. The locker room was similar to one you'd find at la fitness and from there, you can go two directions. The first choice you have is to enter a room to the left that has lots of pools, showers, areas to sit and wash yourself, and benches for body scrub services. The second option is to go the hallway on the right, and go to the communal area where the guys and girls are together. First, we joined the naked Koreans and went in the pool room. Being totally nude in front of dozens of people is really something that does not come naturally. I was very hesitant to the thought of it, but once you get there and everyone is naked, you'd be the odd man out to keep clothes on. So we showered, went in all the different pools, bathed ourselves in public, and just hung out nude. Interesting right. We bought shampoo, conditioner, and body scrub to use to wash. Before we left the room, we decided to cap off the experience with a body scrub. It felt really good, but it was a little interesting having someone move you around and scrub you down butt naked. Afterwards, we put on our pajamas and went into the guys and girls section. There was a restaurant, many different sauna rooms, a workout center, a kids area, and a sleep room. We tried out all the equipment in the workout room. The saunas were pretty cool. They were all at different temperatures, from hot to cold, with different aromas to take in as you sat in them. The last sauna was hot and made of flooring of hard metal balls, which were relaxing as you laid/rolled on them. We got pictures in it. For dinner, we enjoyed a good American pasta from Outback steakhouse. Maggie wanted to go back to her school to say goodbye to her Tuesday/Thursday students so we did that and she told all five classes about her banker that told her this morning, "I hope to meet you again before we both die" haha, they loved it. We went to a cafe to find wifi after the visit and are getting up early in the morning to go to the DMZ.