Thoughts and Travels

5.21.2008 The Spa…

May 21st, 2008 Posted in Uncategorized

This morning was early because I planned to go to the spa with some of the other folks. I didn’t get much rest this evening because of a cough I seem to have developed over the last couple days. Anyway, I got up early and took a walk before meeting the others to go to the spa. It was very quiet and peaceful there in the morning. Its smell and quietness reminded me of the west in the morning, maybe Wyoming or Montana. It was beautiful.

Several of us got together to go to the spa. As we drove up to “Spa World” which I expected to be some smaller building, we rounded a corner to see a large complex. It was a bit strange to see this large a complex out in the woods, but nothing is very far from a city in South Korea. So Dr. Moon and Dr. Lee bought tickets for the rest of us and we went in.

I didn’t understand the etiquette of the place so I followed Dr. Lee’s lead and followed him through the front door where we all removed our shoes (which is a common practice in restaurants and other public buildings in South Korea) and left them in a locker. We all followed Dr. Lee to the men’s locker room (the men that is, the women followed Dr. Moon) and I walked in to see a room full of sinks, lockers, chairs, valets, etc. The room was pretty nice, but there were many old naked men walking around, after all this was a bathhouse and no clothes was the thing to do.

All of us left our modesty and our clothes in the locker room and went out to the hot bath area where there were many hot spring baths that were heated directly from geysers. It was pretty nice. There were several pools at different temperatures, and although I think there was an order that people normally got into them, we all did them in whatever order we felt like it.

First was the 44 degree C pool which was quite hot, then to the 42 degree C pool which had jaccuzzi bubbles and was quite nice. Then into the sauna. After baking for a while, I had to leave and went to jump into the 16 degree C pool which was a cold shock to the system. I followed this up with a jump back into the 44 degree pool. All this time, most of us stayed in a group going from one pool to the next, but a few broke off and did their own thing. One of the students (who didn’t wear his glasses in) didn’t see a sign and accidentally got into a pool that was only for washing hair. It had a sign saying not to get into the pool, but because he wasn’t wearing glasses, he didn’t see it until we yelled at him, making the whole room look over in his direction. It was pretty funny and we have given him a hard time about it.

After this, we went to the tub where there was some juniper smelling water. It was relaxing, but after a while, it was time to go so we did a quick jump back into the 16 degree water, then into the 44 degree water then out to get dressed and leave.

It was a very relaxing way to spend the morning, and although we had to overcome our modesty issues, I think it would be a nice thing to have in the U.S.

We all went back to find a couple students having breakfast at the top cabin. We all joined in, and after eating, packed up our things and left the area.

First stop of the day was an aquarium where all the native fish species of south Korea were on display. It was pretty neat as there were many different fish (I didn’t realize South Korea had this much diversity). They had some breeding pools out in the back where they were raising many of the fish (presumably to stock lakes or rivers with). It was a good hour or so of walking around looking at different fish and animal species. There was a cool set of predacious diving beetles that were swimming in a tank. Those would have been fun to watch for a while longer.

Alas, we had to leave and so went on to the ocean (the East Sea) and spent an hour wading in the ocean and skipping rocks. It was awesome. I waded for a while. Everyone really enjoyed that stop I think.

We then went on to a farm where a student from one of the first Exchange programs with ISU (Han bo rem) had a Korean Native Pig farm and was raising pigs for sale and for use in his restaurant. We didn’t spend much time there as he couldn’t let us into the buildings to view anything (due to possible disease) so he got a couple pigs from inside t show us the difference between Korean Native Pigs and the US pigs.

Then we went into town to his restaurant where he serves his Korean Native Pigs as food. This is one of the only outlets for this pork because the pigs grow too slowly and don’t get big enough to be economically worth raising many of.

After this, it was getting pretty late, so we headed straight for Daegu.

We got to Daegu just in time to go to stop at the University (where Mike and Denise got off to get some gifts for the homestay students) and we went on to a nice restaurant where there was a farewell party waiting for us. The party was actually for the international symposium and for us as a farewell party so there were many other people as well from China, Japan, and Korea. It was quite a night and many people got pretty drunk. Everyone was toasting everyone else, the students all got up to make a short speech about how they enjoyed their stay in South Korea so far, and that went over very well.

After this, the party was winding down, but the previous dean (from a year ago) said there would be another party in the hotel in the lounge on the 2^nd floor and that we should all attend. Dick and Mike were taken to a Karoke bar by Dr. Lee and I didn’t see them again until about midnight. There were many people at the other party both students from ISU and students from Korea, along with some of the Chinese delegation and others. It was a great time.