Jjimjibang Reprise

If you don't remember it, I wrote a post last June or so about my first experience in the jjimjibang, the mother of all the saunas in the world. In this place there is no room for modesty or fear, there is only room for more and more naked, saggy women. They lounge about as if they were forgotten goddesses, their beauty finally catching up with their age though ambivalent to the entire process and thus fully and proudly exposed to the elements of the near boiling water and steamed and pressed air. They are fearless, they are Korean ajumas.

Also, if you don't remember it, I was too timid to bare myself. I ran to the bathroom, eyes glued to the floor, changed, and ran back. My eyes leaving the pink tiles only once to catch a glimpse of a rather aged body, I believe I compared it to a fruit dried too long in the sun? If not, that is the description I would give it now as now I have seen more than my share of saggy tushes to last a lifetime!

Yesterday, I went with my co-teacher and her friends to an animal shelter some two hours away. It was in the middle of the mountains, south of Suwon. A curvy ride and me on little sleep (again only two hours!), I was near retching when the vehicle stopped. However, getting out of the vehicle I heard the barks of 75 pouches all wanting love from me and group. I perked up for the next four hours as we petted, walked and played with the dogs and then kitties. (I now have a hundred new friends! Love puppy and kitty love ^^ NOT bunny.) Anyways, it was a pretty well spent day even though my ass was definitely still in bed in my head. I was happy with the concept of home with a bath and bed. But, as we all filed back into the vehicle, my co-teacher chirps a kind reminder to me that I had said a couple days prior that I would be willing to go to a jjimjibang. Ah! Thank you co-teach, I had almost thought I was in the clear, off foreign person duty and headed for the four walls I've grown to love.

It was another two hours to our jjimjibang of choice, the most famous one in Korea, known for its popularity during the Joseong Dynasty (some two hundred years prior.) Now, there stands a number of jjimjibangs, norae bangs (karaoke rooms), PC bangs and new subway line stop to bring it ever more popularity.

I napped in the car, or shall I say passed out? We finally arrived their at 7 PM, a time I would not have minded going to bed. But as it was, I was expected to be company, so company I was.

We walked into the jjimjibang, my mind floating between real time and my bed back home. As real time was about to get awkward, I was mainly in my bed already. I didn't even notice them pay or give me the key to my locker. I just followed like the good puppy I am, opening my locker for my shoes with the attention of a ferret. I followed in the line as we went into the women jjimjibang area through a number of doorways and corridors. I was about to continue following in my stupor until we actually crossed the threshold into the abyss of ajuma flesh.

Can I say that six months ago, when I first went to a jjimjibang, I was not prepared, I was still learning Korean culture and so definitely couldn't understand it thus look at it? I was simply ignorant, and kind of happy to be. I did not see myself stripping down with only a two foot towel to cover my extremities. I also did not see myself taking a shower and chatting with my neighbor borrowing their soap in passing.

Now, I can safely say that I am a changed person. I have to be, or else maybe I was just that tired and out of it to be utterly impartial to the whole experience. But in the hindsight I have of it, I was pretty darn okay with everything. I, with my co-teacher and her life long friends (a very, very, very close bond here!), casually got down to our nothings. Then we casually walked to the showers, past the ajumas staring ever so blatantly at the foreigner with their grandchildren sometimes pointing and saying 'waygook saram!' (foreign person!). Then we casually took a hot shower in an almost humorous line. Three long-haired, young, shapeless Korean women and a curvy, short-haired teenager looking foreigner with jewelry and a tattoo to top. I did not look, but I am certain that every person in that shower room (and it is a big room with many, many people) stole a glance or a stare nearly fifty times. I could see the turned heads out of the corners of my eyes and feel the heat of the ajuma mind on my back. I am actually quite glad I was so out of it, that situation sounds extremely awkward now that I type it!

A ten minute shower and a pink jjimjibang uniform later, we went into the common sleeping area dry and finally covered. From then on things went a tad better. We played Rummikub and I got my butt waxed. Then a Korean card game based on numbers (thus I could play- I actually am good at numbers in Korean!) though still got my butt waxed. I was quite awake and enjoying myself until one of the girls boyfriends bought us each a cheap beer called Max. It is just one of the terrible Korean beers, but I drank it out of politeness. Bad idea. When finished I was near sleep walking. It was now 10:30 at night, my adrenaline extinguished and my eyes dry from no sleep and two days of constant contact wearing. I passed out on the sad excuse for a sleeping pad, the plastic etching lines in my face with every minute of deeper and deeper sleep. Finally off to never land.

It was the next morning at 6 AM when my dreams of beds and pillows were interrupted by the poke of co-teacher saying, "Jenna, let's go!" Again, I was extremely exhausted, and could not figure out why we were getting up at 6 in the morning on a Sunday. I went back to my safe house of following the group. Into the women's area, to the locker and back to... low and behold the replayed casual shower of the previous night. This time though, my mind was a bit more alert as it had had a few more hours of sleep to rejuvenate itself. Thus, I glanced around, took in the scene and the actual shower and bath facilities. There were three separate bathing areas. Two in the middle of the room, the ceiling low. Their temperatures displayed on the columns framing them. There were a couple ajumas bathing, the early morning hours no doubt an unpopular time to take a hot bath with your friends. (The previous night there were near sixty women!) To the back left of the room there was another hotter bath, elevated to overlook the entire shower room. Perhaps where the queens went? To the back right were the sitting showers, the area to shave your legs or sponge bathe your friends and family; your choice! Then there was the corner I was in to the immediate right of the entrance. Six showers lined the wall in display form. So as when you turned towards the shower, your butt was exposed to the entire room, and vice versa when turned around. Meaning, there was no hiding. Thankfully, shiny metal made up the shower structure on the wall. A handy dandy mirror to see who was checking out your ass. I was able to catch a couple ajumas and frown at them for their immodest blatancy. (I realize I'm strange looking to them, but I think it should be made a universal code to not stare at people (especially strangers) when they are naked!)

This time I did not wait for my comrades, and ran out in five minutes. I was clothed and waiting patiently for ten minutes.

So, in sum of my jjimjibang experiences, I think I get a gold star for improved performance and a silver star for improved understanding (I was still a bit tweaked though ambivalent). I think I have if anything definitely segued into understanding the Korean way of life. The jjimjibang, as weird as it is for the Westerner, is not actually that weird. It was actually, in hindsight, rather comforting. Meaning, though gawked at like a zoo animal, I still felt strangely united. I felt like I was apart of something greater? Say humanity in its most basic form? Like a brotherhood, the experience was bonding and now everlasting. I will forever be friends with my co-teacher, and consequently her life-long friends. Perhaps it was a test? Maybe my co-teach and her friends have a gang, and I'm now a member? I think in some way that's correct. Except, I'm not just in their gang, I feel I've joined a bit to the Korean gang over all. Scary, I know. But I strangely understand them ever more so now that I've showered with them, as I have drank with them, and as I have slept on cement floors with them.

Conversely, I don't know if I could do this with my foreign friends. It's just a bit too much just yet. (Though, my best and life long friend Amy did actually go to a jjimjibang that was empty but for two ajumas a month ago. I don't really count that as real jjimjibang, as there were just four eyes on us, not 100!) We did okay because we are like sisters. And now, I guess we are certainly kin!

But this experience was the first and most impressing one I've had of the Korean jjimjibang. My co-teacher was the cherry on top of the hundreds of eyes! I cannot regret it as I've learned more about Korea in those ten minutes than I have in the past seven months! I can't explain the bond that was created. I can feel it. I can remember it. Yet, I feel this blog is non-explanatory. I guess, though my eyes burned a little with the sag of ajuma extremities and my conscience questioning my place in the Korean world, my heart conversely felt more humane than ever. The jjimjibang reprise was thus, in my burning eyes, a great and too long put-off experience.