naked in public

I realize that I've basically dropped off the face of the earth when it comes to blog posts, but since I'm back in Korea for a week, I thought it was only appropriate to come back here to let everyone know how it's going.

I set out this morning with a plan to locate the Worldwide Taekwondo Federation Museum. After three hours of wandering hopelessly around a five-block radius, I finally found signs pointing me to where I wanted to be. In my head, it was going to be full of awesome doboks and interactive exhibits where I could fight black belts. In real life, it looked like this.

That's it. One room of old trophies and pictures of people I've never heard of. Oh, and this gem.

That's precisely how I felt about the whole museum experience.

I left the museum and decided that a cold, rainy day was the perfect day to try out my first Korean sauna. I took the subway a half an hour north and promptly got lost again, taking a full hour to find something that is literally visible from the subway exit. If it ever comes down to it, I could start a very lucrative (although admittedly unreliable) taxi business.

Once inside the jimjilbang, I received my sauna clothes, dropped my shoes in the front locker, and headed upstairs to the "women only" floor. As soon as I stepped out of the elevator, I knew I had made a terrible mistake.

In case you're unfamiliar with the concept of Korean saunas, I should interject here with a little background knowledge. The primary purpose of a jimjilbang is as a public bathhouse. As in, bathing. With the public. Lots of naked, everywhere.

When I stepped out of the elevator, the room was filled with old Asian women in various stages of undressing. I clutched my sauna clothes to my chest and stared at the floor as I walked across the locker room, ignoring the fact that I would soon be joining them in nudity.

I spent a full five minutes debating whether I should just cover my eyes and run away, but I had already spent eleven dollars, dammit, and I was going to make it worth it. Besides, once I finished showering, I could put on the t-shirt and shorts I was given at the door, and all would be right in the world again.

The showers turned out to be an entire floor dedicated to bathing. Giant tubs, spigots, waterfalls, and, of course, a whole lot of naked. I ran straight to the first empty shower head and took the fastest (and least efficient) shower of my life. I didn't even have soap with me; I basically just let the water spray me for a second then scurried back out the door, avoiding eye contact with everyone in the room.

I didn't even wait until I was back up the stairs to put the sauna clothes on. I steered away from the changing room and instead chose to go to the "co-ed" floor where everyone would be fully clothed. I quickly discovered that very few, if any, people go to jimjilbangs alone. Every room I went into had pockets of friends dotting the floors and couples snuggling in the corners. I was just the weird foreign girl who walked in and sat for a while by herself, which is not really who anyone wants to be.

I went into every room that didn't explicitly say "No Women!" on the door before finally deciding I had had about enough fun for the day. I wound my way through the locker room again and changed back into my regular clothes as fast as humanly possible then made my way to the door.

So basically, when you break it down, I spent about 80% of my day wandering around lost and the other 20% surrounded by naked old ladies. For the record, that's about 20% more than I'd like to be surrounded by naked old ladies. I did, however, learn how to do this with my towel:

So it was all worth it.

"Hiking" doesn't mean what I thought it did

This doesn't come as a shock to most of you, but I'm from the midwest. Born and raised in Ohio, I call it pop and never soda, carry an umbrella, sunscreen, and mittens year-round, and hate the colors blue and yellow. This weekend, I learned that I also misunderstood the word "hiking."

My family used to go "hiking" when I was younger, and my friends and I went "hiking" all the time in college. "Hiking" for me meant walking along a relatively flat trail in some tree-filled location, occasionally climbing over a fallen tree branch or medium-sized rock. I loved going "hiking" out at Houston Woods when I wanted to hang out in nature in Oxford, and I frequently met friends at Winton Woods in Cinci to explore the "hiking" trails. As I understood it, "hiking" was fun, relaxing, and peaceful.

Enter Korea.

Earlier this week, my friend Jay asked if I wanted to go hiking this weekend at Bukhan Mountain. Using the definition I just described, I determined that hiking was, in fact, something I wanted to do with my friends. A few days later, Jay emailed me some details of the trip, explaining that the peak we were going to ascend was rated an "intermediate level" climb and checking to be sure we were all up for the task. Never one to overestimate my physical capabilities, I emailed Jay back to ask what exactly an "intermediate level" trail might look like. He replied that as an American girl who grew up playing sports and is in shape, I should have absolutely no trouble climbing up the mountain.

Let's all take a moment to laugh about the fact that Jay assumed I'm in shape and have ever played a sport in my life.

After an email like that, I couldn't hardly respond and say I'm too out of shape for the climb; my pride is much, much stronger than my laziness. I happily agreed to the challenge, assuming "intermediate" climbing was as challenging as "intermediate" Dance, Dance Revolution: harder than I'm used to, but still entirely doable.

Do any of you see where this is going yet?

We met at the subway station at 9:20 in the morning, and we headed out for the trail. Our group consisted of four guys and four girls, and everyone seemed pretty chipper despite it being before noon on a Saturday. The entrance to the trail was up a set of stairs, but the ground leveled out fairly quickly after we reached the top. All was well.

Our group chatted happily and enjoyed the trees for a while, but sooner than I expected, we came to a bit of a climb.

My friends and I jokingly referred to it as "level 1" and headed to the top. After each set of rocks, the ground would level out again and we'd resume our cheerful banter, sometimes stopping to be annoyingly American.

On one of our stops, someone hilariously commented that a nearby monstrosity (Baekundae Peak) was actually our planned destination.

"Sure," I said. "That's pretty and all, but you can't actually climb that part."

"Yes you can, and we are! See those little dots? Those are people climbing!"

I started to get a little nervous. And by "a little nervous", I mean, "it's a good thing I was sweating so much or else I'd have peed my pants."

Much sooner than I'd have preferred, our dainty nature hike turned into actually climbing a frickin mountain.

Every time we would get to the top of a particularly treacherous part, I'd feel a little rush of adrenaline, and an overwhelming sense of accomplishment, only to realize we had another stupid chunk of rock to climb up.

There were tons and tons of people doing the very same climb we were, and most of them were much older than our group, but they still all managed to be handling it far better than I was. In fact, they were quite amused by the fact that I always appeared one misstep from tumbling to my death.

I mean, really, look how delighted that man is by my imminent demise.

After three hours (THREE HOURS) of walking straight into the sky, we finally reached the top. The peak was beautiful, and in theory I should have been praising God for the majestic view I was witnessing. Unfortunately, all I could think about was how if I lost my balance even a little bit, I'd have fallen half a mile. Okay, I probably wouldn't have fallen the whole 2700+ feet; I bet a tree or something would have stopped me. Nonetheless, when your legs are shaking and everything around you is made of smooth rock, you're much more concerned with the placement of your feet than the pretty view.

If the way up was panic-inducing, the way down was flat out terrifying. On top of trying to maneuver across the slippery rocks at a downward angle, my legs were shaking like mad. A bunch of ajusshis (older men) snuck in between the rest of the group and me, and I had a little panic attack knowing I couldn't grab hold of any of my friends should I start to slip. Just when I realized this, my foot slid a little down the rock, and the ajusshi behind me grabbed my hand. They all used their limited English to encourage me to "take it easy" and "please be very cautious" as I tried desperately to get back to my friends. Now that I'm safely sitting on my apartment floor, I can look back and declare it precious and kind of amusing. In the moment, it wasn't much fun.

We stopped a little ways down to have lunch, and that was my favorite part of the climb. We sat on a mostly flat area that still had a great view of the mountains around us, but there wasn't really any risk of falling. Although we were all exhausted and covered with sweat, sitting on the side of that mountain eating lunch with my friends is going to be one of the best memories I have of my whole year here.

It took nearly as long to climb down as it did to climb up, and I would say it was actually harder on the way down (shaky legs and lightheadedness don't make for an easy climb). Luckily, my friend Stephen was fantastic. He made sure to place himself between me and another girl who was also terrified out of her mind, and he bounced back and forth, grabbing our hands and lifting us down off the rocks. Honestly, I wouldn't have made it up or down the mountain without his hand to hold onto. He always seemed to know exactly where we would slip and was ready to grab us when we did. At one point, he was a little ways ahead of me and I got stuck between two rocks. He realized I wasn't behind him and started climbing back down to find me; I made it out before he got there, but seriously, what a great friend.

When we finally got to the bottom, I was still feeling lightheaded, so people kept offering me water. Every time I drank more, I'd feel sicker, and I nearly passed out on the subway ride home. After I finally made it back to my apartment, I immediately fell asleep, and when I woke up, I still felt really dizzy. I ate a handful of M&M's and voila! I felt better almost instantly. I suppose if you climb a mountain for seven hours and only eat an apple, your blood sugar, um, tanks. Lesson learned: when climbing a mountain, everyone else needs to bring water. I need to bring candy.

It's been over thirty hours now since the mountain trek, and I can say with 100% certainty that my muscles - every last one of them - all hate me with a vengeance. Muscles I didn't know I had are screaming out in pain every single time I move.

And it was totally worth it.

Okay, Korea. I get it.

Korea never misses an opportunity to remind me of how single I am. Whether it's nearly an entire month of weddings or three separate Valentine's Days, Korea seems to constantly be on the lookout for ways it can shove my unattached-ness right in my face. Apparently even climbing a mountain is a "couples-only" activity in K-land, which my friends and I didn't know until last night.

The weather here is absolutely beautiful right now, but I've been warned that summers make you want to die a thousand miserable deaths. Since summer is rapidly approaching, I'm trying to cram in as many outdoor activities as possible before I confine myself to my air-conditioned apartment until my contract is up (skype, anyone?). Yesterday after church, Kelsey, Lauren, and I decided to climb the (arguably) most famous mountain in Seoul - Namsan. On top of the mountain rests one of Seoul's most popular landmarks, Namsan Tower, and we wanted to get to the top of it.

Directive.

Although it would have been so much fun to actually hike up the side, we knew we wouldn't get to the top until dusk, and what fun is that? Also, Lauren didn't have her inhaler with her, and Kelsey and I weren't in the mood to carry around a dead body. We opted for the cable cars.

In theory, the cable car should have been the first step on our romantic journey. When I imagine cable cars, I think of them like ski lifts or ferris wheel gondolas, perfect for snuggling and enjoying the view.

Just magical.

The cable car didn't take us quite to the top, so we still got a little bit of hiking in. In anticipation of walking up the side of a mountain, we had all worn, you know, normal shoes. However, we were embarrassingly under-dressed for the climb.

At the top, we followed the crowds to what we hoped would be a beautiful view of the city. It was, in fact, quite lovely, but we were surrounded by this.

Those are locks. Thousands and thousands and thousands of locks. With love letters.

Couples in Korea come to Namsan Tower to buy locks, write sappy messages on said locks, and attach them to the fence to show their unending love. Ahem. Thanks for that, Korea.

Surrounded by dozens of happy couples, Kelsey, Lauren, and I did the only thing we could - made fun of our loneliness.

 When there's another person, this makes a heart. 

When you're alone, it makes you look like a tool.

Puckering up for, um, no one.

 Apparently no matter how old you get or what country you're in, 

making out with yourself in public is still hilarious.

Before we left the land of commitment and sappiness, we had to do our part to make sure at least a few of these couples don't last. Bitterness loves company, right?

Take that, happiness!

Next, we headed toward the gift shop to buy some overpriced souvenirs. You know how much I hate junk, but you probably don't know that I sometimes collect bookmarks. I like buying things to remember places I've been, but I hate having worthless things; therefore, it makes perfect sense to buy bookmarks. They're cheap, they're pretty, and they keep me from having to use receipts and tissues to mark my page. So we searched the gift shop for bookmarks, and what did we come up with?

Yeah. His and hers bookmarks. Screw you, Korea.

Because we hadn't gotten to do much climbing, I insisted we follow a random path off the side of the mountain to see where it led. On the way down, we passed tons of people struggling to breathe as they climbed up, but we just laughed and kept going. When the path flattened out, we stopped to take some pictures before returning to the top.

 Pretty, no?

We set off up the hill with high spirits; going down was a piece of cake, so how hard could it really be to climb back up?

Turns out, very hard.

Of course, Korea took full advantage of yet another prime moment to remind me that I had no boyfriend. If I had, I could have made him push me up the hill while I played on my cell phone.

Now that's what boyfriends are for!

Back at the top, we rode the "fastest elevator in the world" to the top of the tower. My camera takes awful nighttime pictures, so I'm going to show you this picture I found online and pretend that it's mine.

We stared out the windows for a while, but it was getting late and we weren't really sure what time the cable cars stopped taking people down the mountain. Although climbing down wouldn't have been all that difficult, doing it in the dark might have posed a slight challenge, so we wanted to make sure we had a ride. We waited in line for a while, rode the cable car, walked to the subway station, and promptly fell asleep on the train.

Black sand kinda looks like mud

The next morning, Jo and I had breakfast on the terrace again before heading out into the city. JoAnn had returned the night before with some really great bargains from the market in Ubud, and since I had spent my entire day playing with monkeys and hanging out with Liesl, I hadn't gotten a chance to visit there yet. We set off in the same general direction but ended up doing our own shopping.

The market was a million things all at once. It felt a little like a flea market, but nearly every shop sold the same thing, and the vendors shamelessly pulled you into their stalls. If you stopped to look at something for longer than a second, you had better be prepared to buy it. I'm honestly kind of surprised I didn't have an anxiety attack while I was there.

(I just looked at all my pictures of the market, and none of them properly convey how horrifically cluttered and overcrowded it was. I'm going to leave it up to your imagination.)

A few brief stories from the market:

• A women selling baskets caught my eye. They weren't normal baskets; they were these completely flat, carved wooden things that opened up into a basket-type shape. (Confused yet? Me too, a little.) Once the woman noticed I was looking, she pounced on me. She showed me every kind of basket she had and grabbed a calculator to show me the price. Although she started with 25 bucks, I knew I'd be able to talk her down fairly easily; the thing was, I didn't want the basket. I live in a one-room apartment 6000 miles away from home; it's not like I'm particularly looking to collect knick knacks at the moment. I told her I didn't have enough money left to buy the basket (which was true) and tried to sneak away, but she grabbed my arm. Down the price went, but I still really didn't want the basket. The woman started muttering "good luck, good luck" under her breath, and I knew I was screwed. In Indonesia, they believe very strongly that your first customer of the day will set whether you will have a lucky sales day. Basically, if your first customer leaves without buying anything, you won't make any money that day. I frantically started scanning the other objects she was selling, but there was really nothing I wanted there. The more I tried to pull away, the more she clutched my arm. The woman had tears in her eyes... and I'm a sucker... so now I have a weird wooden basket thing. One day I'll have some kind of bookcase to put it on and I can proudly tell the story about how I bought it for nearly nothing at a market in Bali, but for now, it taunts me as an ever-present reminder that I literally don't know how to say no.
• I don't have any perfume here. I didn't bring mine with me because I somehow got it in my head that I'd find something really exotic here that would make me a kind of sensually-scented goddess. Instead, I've merely gone four and a half months smelling like a mixture between my shower gel and laundry. I decided in Bali that that would no longer be the case, and I set out to purchase perfume. Unfortunately, in a country where not everyone can afford food, good-smelling water isn't high on the sales priority list. At the market, however, I did stumble across some essential oils. I'm the kind of girl who buys premixed Italian seasonings because combining oregano with... whatever else is in that... just seems too complicated for my limited attention span, but for some reason, I decided at that moment that I would make my own perfume. I chose a few flowery oils, and when I got home, I googled "how to make your own perfume." The recipe I found online said to combine a few drops of oil with pure grain alcohol, so I headed to the mart to locate "pure grain alcohol." Unfortunately, I haven't the faintest idea what that means, so I just bought something clear with pretty colors on the bottle. I still haven't gotten around to dumping the oil in the liquor bottle, but once I do, I'll let you know how it turns out. I may even be able to tell you in person after having been fired for my job for showing up to work smelling like I bathed in floral tequila.
• I bought something special for my honeymoon.

• That mask, combined with my new "I'm a pitiful (but floral!) drunk" perfume, is going to be the start of a marriage that lasts about as long as a box of Twinkies at fat camp.

Once Jo and I reconvened at the home stay, we packed up our suitcases and said goodbye to Ubud. The final stop on our tour de Bali was Lovina, the home of the black sand beaches. A three-hour car ride later, we dropped off our things and ran out to see this gorgeous black sand.

In case it wasn't obvious by the title of this post, I'll go ahead and point out the fact that black sand looks remarkably like mud.

Our arrival in Lovina was a handful of hours before midnight. Jo and I decided to hang out in the hotel for a little bit before heading out to find a place to ring in the New Year. Because we're both super-cool people, we ended up falling asleep with our faces in books. We're pretty much the definition of party animals. When the clock struck midnight, people set off some fireworks on the beach that ran right behind our hotel. In Korea, being awoken in the middle of the night by loud noises means Kim Jong-il finally snapped, but in Indonesia, it means celebration!

(Note: this is not an actual picture of the fireworks we saw.)

Our last morning in Indonesia, we woke up and looked outside, only to see this:

That's a lot of rain.

We actually got quite lucky; we visited Indonesia during its peak rainy season, but we only got stuck inside on our last day. Besides, as was previously stated, we're both huge nerds and really enjoyed having an excuse to spend the morning reading on the porch.

The rain cleared up by afternoon, and we headed out to take pictures in the town. Due to my new-found affinity for macro mode, I have far more pictures than I'm sure you're interested in, but here are a few of my faves.

We headed back to the hotel and spent the rest of the daylight hours in the pool before gathering our things and saying goodbye to Lovina. The cabdriver who took us to the airport was by far the absolute worst driver in the history of the world, and I've never been more motion-sick in my life. I had to sit with my forehead smashed against my knees to keep myself from throwing up. Just remembering it is making me queasy right now, so I'm gonna go ahead and stop writing about it.

That's the story of Bali! I literally took over a thousand pictures, and one day, I promise I'll upload them to facebook. Until then, um, just watch the last part of Eat, Pray, Love.

Back to Bali

After we left the Gilis (and my fiance), we headed to the "cultural center" of Bali: Ubud. The cab pulled in long after dark, and all the shops looked closed down. Although we had been told by numerous people that Ubud was "the" place to be in Bali, it looked completely dead. Having just left paradise island, driving through a scarcely populated village made me, um, a tad bit cranky. We carried our stuff up to the room, and I promptly had a hissy fit. I'm not going to go into details because it's my blog and I can make myself out to look like an always-pleasant-to-be-around ray of sunshine if I want to (even if it's horrifically untrue).

We dropped off our things and went out into the town. Pretty much everything closes in Bali when the sun goes down, so neither of us took our cameras when we went out onto the streets. That was a terrible decision because we ended up catching the end of what was one of the strangest and coolest shows I'd ever had the pleasure to witness. It was a retelling of the Hindu spiritual story of the Ramayana in the form of a ballet, and it contained costumes like this one:

We literally stared at the entire production, eyes wide and mouths hanging open, the whole time the women were dancing. I feel like such a failure that I don't have any pictures of it :(

In the morning, we toured our home stay, which turned out to also be an art gallery. Jo Ann is really artsy and loves looking at paintings and sculptures, so she walked around taking fancy pictures of artwork. I also took pictures of things I found interesting and culturally enlightening.

This is also the point of the trip where Jo taught me what "macro mode" is on my camera; therefore, I spent a good hour taking pictures of every flower I could find. I have approximately 1,983,527 pictures of Indonesian plant life, should you ever want to see it. For now, I'll just post a couple so you can ooh and ahh at my amazing photography skills.

Due to our little spat the night before, we opted to head out our separate directions for the first part of the day. Jo wanted to go shopping, and I had heard there were more monkeys to be found. She set off for the market, and I set off for the primates.

There's no other way to say it: Ubud was cool. I felt like I was on some kind of really elaborate movie set the entire time I was walking around. The shops and restaurants had so much character. I'm finding that it's really hard to describe this place, so I think I'm going to just resort to showing you pictures.

The roads to the monkey forest were so incredible that I'd have gladly wandered for miles. I wish I had better words to describe this; there's just a richness there that I've never felt before. It felt like colors were brighter, and sounds were clearer, and foods tasted fuller.

I swear I wasn't on drugs.

Anyway...

The monkey forest was bigger than the temple Jo and I had visited in Sanur, and there were hundreds of monkeys everywhere. Coolest. Forest. Ever.

While at the monkey forest, I made friends with a girl named Liesl. Liesl is from Oregon and is spending five months traveling around Asia. Basically, I wanted her life. I settled for having lunch with her.

She took me to a little restaurant near her hotel, and we talked about everything she had done so far on her trip and where she planned to go next. Although I had already pretty much made up my mind to go home and go to grad school, this crazy girl was very close to convincing me to quit my job and move to Thailand/Cambo/India/AnywhereButHere. She added me on facebook and we made tentative plans to hang out in Seoul before she heads back to America before parting ways. As an update, my facebook stalking skills tell me that she just arrived in India, and my envy level is at an all-time high, considering the fact that it's 3 degrees here and, you know, it's not India.

I met Jo Ann back at the home stay, and we had a van waiting to take us to the Spa Hati. There are massage places all over Indonesia, all for less than a cheeseburger and fries cost here, but this place is glamorous. I'd never had a massage before, and honestly, if I can't have another one like that, then it's totally not worth it. Oils, trickling fountains, showers with water that came out of a carved lion's head. This place was heavenly. I obviously don't have pictures of me getting massaged because I was wearing only a sarong, but here are some pictures of the spa, sans naked me.

The greatest thing about this place was that it was a non-profit. All the money they made went straight into funding an English school, so I was completely okay with paying a whopping $27 for an hour and a half massage. If you're ever in Ubud, I'd totally recommend it :)

More relaxed than I've ever been in my entire life, I returned to the home stay with Jo and we headed out to catch dinner and another show. This time, I had my camera on hand, but the costumes weren't as off-the-wall as the night before. Fortunately for you, you didn't see the ones from the night before, so you don't know what you're missing out on!

Despite having fewer words than any other post I've ever written, this has taken me almost three hours. Granted, it's mainly because I have extreme ADD and keep switching to facebook/gmail/whatever random thing I feel like googling. Nonetheless, I'm getting awfully bored staring at my computer, so this is where this installment will end. Ciao!