Monday, December 7, 2009

Ragdoll and Baby

Ragdoll and Baby Simultaneously

Fellow blog patriots,

Sorry I haven’t written in awhile. I have been very busy here in Korea. I’ve picked up several hobbies: rock climbing(very big sport in Korea), learning to play the ukulele' yoga' Taekwondo(Soon I’ll be able to break wooden boards with my hands and fists),and trip preparing(I’m taking a much needed four day vacation to Japan for skiing in February).

Along with these very dangerous hobbies, I have also been assimilating to the Korean lifestyle:

1.Kimchi Maniac. If I don’t have kimchi at least once a day, I immediately contract a cold.

2.Workaholic. Vacations are a thought of the past. The longest vacation I will have all year will be four days, that’s including the weekend.

3.Pushy Spitter. I enjoy spitting on the street and pushing random strangers, as long as they are younger than me.

4.OCD. I have grown accustomed to peeling every fruit and vegetable I eat. Koreans overload their fruits/vegetables with pesticides.

5.Bower. Occasionally I bow to people, but I’ve recently been having some neck issues, so that Korean custom is on hold.

6.Naked enthusiast. I have taken a liking to Korean public baths.

Korean public baths vary tremendously. I actually went to the largest public bath in Asia (although I’m sure Japan also has claim to the largest public bath). The largest bath in Asia compared to the other public baths I’ve gone to is more closely aligned to a spa, thus it is named The Spa.

The Spa had dozens of hot saunas that were for both sexes. Mind you, we all had to wear loose fitting cotton clothes that looked similar to Taekwondo drab, except that they were an off-set maroon color. The Spa was equipped with a TV room(you could watch your favorite TV shows while overlooking the skyline of the second largest city in Korea, Busan), a smoking room, high-end massages and a workout facility.
And, of course, The Spa had the baths. Bathes are a place where women and men separate into their various sexes, get naked, rub each other raw and glee with delight. This is really where the story begins…

Now, being detail oriented and not wanting your imagination to run to wild: "The Bath," or should I say, baths, are wonderful and composed of a series of rooms with hot and cold tubs. The tubs have multiple water temperatures and switching from the extremely hot ones to the icy cold help with health problems and prevent future ailments. The pangs of going from hot to cold so drastically reminded me of jumping into the snow after soaking in a warm hot tub: the feeling is exhilarating, frightening and nippy.

If you have already forgotten this detail, I will remind you again: Everyone is naked and everyone shares the same large baths. It is imperative that you shower before you get in. On my trip to The Spa, an old woman actually grabbed my arm and began rubbing it to ensure I showered properly; the more she rubbed, the more she realized that my arm was a little oily from my massage earlier that day. A sneer crossed her face as she called me Russian.

Oh, I didn’t mention my massage earlier that day? Well, let me indulge.
First, Koreans are insane about their skin. They spend tons of money on cosmetic treatments for their skin and judge people’s beauty by the glow of the skin and the white porcelain perfection of it. Women and men exfoliate once a week with very rough cloths; they’ve done this routine since childhood and thus the cloth no longer hurts their skin. When you go to a public bath and get a massage you are being scrubbed with this catlike-tongue cloth.

In a public bath there are three ways you can receive a massage/skin scrub:

1.Scrub yourself: Public baths have small "stations of beauty" for this type of activity. I like to call them this because the stations are not beautiful, nor are the women at these stations. The stations consist of a mirror, a small white stool (again everyone is naked and women switch without sanitizing the seat),and a woman scrubbing herself to oblivion.

2.Ask a friend: Many women do this and if I actually had friends here I might do the same. I could just imagine myself requesting, “Natalie, scrub hard in-between the cracks,” or, “Vita, really put some grease in my scrub this time. Last time you went half-ass on my feet." Sadly, I don’t really have friends here that would do such a thing.

3.Buy a friend: I find this scenario to be the most glamorous of them all. Imagine a woman in lingerie taking you(remember you are naked)to a room full of other naked women. The room is reminiscent of a high school gym’s physical therapy room with a ton of rickety old massage benches and the smell of musk. They sanitize your personal massage table by throwing hot water on it.

They then push you down onto the bench like a rag doll and the scrubbing begins. Korean women love being scrubbed by these lingerie women or as I like to call them prima scrubbers. But, I had a little different experience at ‘The Spa’…

After being thrown on this unsanitized plastic bench they began rubbing me with soapy water and by rubbing, I mean they actually threw the soapy water on me. And then they scrubbed. It hurt. In fact, I’ve never felt so much hurt before.

The prima scrubber who was scrubbing me that day was a little ornery. She kept screaming, “You are dirty” to me in Korean and laughing with her fellow prima scrubber at my lack of scrubbing knowledge.

In between the scrubbing of my skin, my faux friend thought it would be nice to help me lose some weight. Some Koreans lose weight by hitting the fat on their body. So while this woman was screaming, “You’re dirty,” she was also slapping my butt, because it’s huge here. All of the anger she had ever felt in her life went straight into my butt. After I thought she was done due to the exhaustion of her voice, she began on my thighs with the persistence of Gandhi and the strength of her great, great, great ,great grandfather Attila the Hun. She colored my thighs crimson. This wasn’t entirely bad because at least I was on my stomach and no one could see me cry, but this sensational slapping didn’t last long.

Eventually, the woman threw me over to my back and began punching my stomach harder than Ali. At this point I started screaming “Ow, Ow, Ow!!!” Instead of stopping she merely mocked me and screamed back “Ow, Ow, Ow” and punched harder.
What a true friend.

After this humiliating and disturbing exfoliation was over, my faux friend changed her personality completely. She threw a bucket of water on me and then began to rub oil all over my body, massaging all the pain away and whipping my tears with an avocado mask. She was as tender as a mother giving a bath to her newborn.

To say the least, I went back, and I do so twice a month. Yes, you may call me masochistic (minus the entire sexual aspect of that word), but the extremes of rag doll and baby are just as thrilling as hot and cold water, confusion and understanding, and life in America and life in Korea.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Fun Fact: Bed Time and Ghost

Dear Parents and others,

It has come to my attention that Korean children do not have a bed time. I see these small innocent creatures wandering the streets late at night and by late, I mean around 11:30 p.m.

I decided to do a little investigating.

I asked my class of second graders when they went to school and like most American children they said they go to school at 8:00 a.m. and like most American school children they get up at 7:00 a.m. to brush their teeth, comb their hair, and play on their new cell phones.

I found this to be rather curious, so I asked what time they and their parents went to bed. They informed me that they went to bed at around 12:00 a.m. and their parents usually went to bed at 3:00 a.m. They did not insinuate that there was in fact a bed time or that they wished to stay up later. Midnight is merely a time for them to go to sleep.

I was astounded!!! A child receiving only 7 hours of sleep with a full load of course work the next day, most my students (second graders) are in regular school for about eight hours; they have about two hours of after school activities ranging from Taekwondo to Piano, and then they have more school activities such as English, Spanish or Math class.

I guess Koreans just don't need that beauty sleep that we in the states do.

Now onto my next topic ghosts:

The other day I was really stressed at my class and I put my hair over my face like Cousin It. The children began to scream, "Ghost! Ghost!"

When I think of a ghosts, I think of a small fluffy character like Casper, but Koreans think of a cryptic Samara from The Ring.

Thus, if I ever want to scare my students into doing their homework and staying up until 3:00 a.m. because they are afraid the ghost will visit them at night, I simply put my hair over my face and tell them, "I'll get you if you aren't good to teacher."

Monday, September 7, 2009

Not in this butt - Newsflash

Much like American children, Korean children like to play tricks on one another. One of their many tricks is to stick their fingers in a gun shape and then stick these two fingers up their comrades' butt holes. The act is called dong chiming. In noun form it is simply dong chim. I'm not kidding!This act happens in schools across Korea (although I can't say North Korea has this practice), but anyone who has worked at a school in South Korea will have heard and/or experienced this disgusting jab.


And no, this hasn't happened do me. But yes, the little demons do it to their teachers too.

To say the least, I'm beginning to walk with my hands on my butt.

Saturday, September 5, 2009

The Girl with No Legs

When I was about six years of age, I got in a terrible fight with my friends. I can't remember what the fight was about, but I do remember my retaliation was of leaving my group (because what punishment is bigger than the absence of me?), and choosing instead to spend my recess hours on the monkey bars.

Honestly, who needs friends when you have a series of metal bars to swing on?

Now when I first began the monkey bars, I wasn't that great. Being short for my age I had the disadvantage of not easily doing twosies (this is when you skip two monkey bars instead of one). I also had hyperhidrosis (this is when your hands sweat profusely) and often times I would slip off the bars just doing onesies.

This hindrance didn't bother me too much for I was one to overcome playground games and I had made a "friend." I called her the Girl with No Legs, or No Legs for short.

I called her this for the obvious reason: She had no legs. Her missing legs amazed me because growing up in Sandpoint, ID you rarely saw a person with a deformity. The town had been blessed with extremely attractive people. Well, at least the cuties that ran in my circle. Of course, you had the average inbred kid from the mountains, but I always chose not to look at these mutations and would leave the cafeteria table anytime one of these beasts would sit next to me. These pitiful and vain actions were getting me into some trouble in Sunday School and in my eyes No Legs was the perfect candidate to earn me some brownie points with God.

Of course, I was not the only kid in search of brownie points with the Big Man upstairs. No Legs had two groupies that followed her around everywhere. I had no need to befriend these groupies for two reasons:

One: I was disgusted at their kindness.

Two: I had much better looking friends outside the monkey bar scene.

But No Legs I did befriend in some way. I think she knew my name and she (like I) chose the monkey bars as our only 'true companion'. We had a special kinship for climbing and skipping and performing monkey like behaviors. The only difference between her and I that I could decipher (other than the legs) was she was no amateur on the monkey bars.

To this day I have not met a monkey barrer like No Legs. She could do everything! Twosies, threesies and someone claimed they saw her do a foursies, which was unheard of on playground land. Her arm muscles were rippling for a third grader and instead of spending her life chained to a wheelchair, No Legs walked on her hands. The action was much like a gorilla. No Legs would clinch her hands into a fist and swing from right to left. Her movement wasn't slow. She paced herself at a steady jog, which enabled her to get to her destinations(cafeteria, classroom, home and monkey bars) quite quickly. She found her way of walking to be both invigorating and it helped strengthen her upper body for monkey barring.

Most people haven't spent a lot of time around the monkey bars and don't really understand the practice that goes into the sport. The monkey bars are split into two disciplines: skipping and playing chicken. No legs was a professional at both. When the playground duty wasn't looking the monkey bar gang would play the more dangerous of the disciplines, chicken.

No Legs always went last to fight against the champion minion. And believe me, no minion ever won against No Legs. I don't know how No Legs did it, but she could wrap her stumps around your hips so tight it felt like she was giving them the sleeper hold.

And don't think the other monkey barrers were going half-assed--no Sandpoint, ID kid puts his second leg forward.

As my friends continued to overlook my absences, I continued to become a better and better monkey barrer. I was starting to do twosies and occasionally threesies. Even No Legs was somewhat encouraging. She would give me a callused high-five and a low grunt.

About a month after I had left my friends, my friend,Sarah, came up to me and started to encourage me to come back to the pretty gang. Having short term memory issues, I couldn't remember why I had become so angered by my friends in the first place. I began to miss playing soccer and spying on the older kids kissing in the dugouts. I came to realize it was time for me to leave the monkey bars.

Once I left, No Legs didn't really have anything to do with me. Her life was about being a "great," and friendships weren't that important to her. I didn't really care to stay in contact,either, and it didn't surprise me when No Legs left the school without me noticing.

During my elementary school career, I got in many fights with my friends and chose other playground equipment to take their place, but I'll never forget the monkey bars.

Occasionally when I see a playground set, I think of No Legs and wonder if she still isn't using a wheelchair to walk. I can almost imagine her walking the streets of New York with her callused fists clenched and her angry grunts reverberating down Fifth Ave.

However, I have a feeling she succumbed to the wheelchair.

I have a feeling that society told No Legs long ago that it was unacceptable to walk on her hands.

But I guess I can still hope and wish that No Legs hasn't left her childish ambition behind her. I hope, like me, she is chasing her dream to see the world through different eyes and not the ones society tells her to look through.

Hell, maybe I'll see her passing through the streets of Korea, stumps and all.

Who am I?

I wanted this blog to be different. I wanted it to steer away from the editorial-centric bullshit that is not only invading our blogosphere, but sadly our news media.

I wanted to be the next Walter Cronkite of travel blogs, giving you the facts and earning your trust.

Sadly, I'm just too funny and I think my personnel adaptations of my experience are better than old journalism rhetoric.

However, in memory of the late and great Walter Cronkite, I will dedicate a few of my blogs to descriptive journalism. To those weary travelers venturing or about to embark on an adventure through Asia.


And for those of you who are not big readers and judging by the literacy in America, I would say there are a lot of you. I will have several blog posts entitled "News flash" these will be quick blurbs about the funny little cultural differences I've stumbled upon in Asia.

Sit back, relax and enjoy the Asian Collective.