Again, it’s been a while since I’ve made an entry. I’ve been packed busy with creating a system to move all the school’s activities onto the internet, so we give parents instantaneous daily reports on their children’s progress while actually, ironically, reducing the amount of paperwork teachers do.
Friday two weeks ago, Injoo and I showed Lars around our old stomping grounds of Handaeap. We had some pork at a new place that had just opened up that advertised very cheap prices. Jeremy joined us, and we went for some beers at Nuna’s.
We then spent some time at Magic Castle. We had missed the cocktail show, but I did get to drink a Screaming Blue Motherfucker before heading down to hang out at a table outside a convenience store. It was there that two Canadian girls who Injoo had met joined us for a little while.
After they and Jeremy left, Injoo suggested we go to XO, the whiskey joint Brant and I liked to go to last year with the pretty girls. Only now, the girls aren’t so pretty or charming, and I wasn’t in the mood to drink anymore. I had had enough. I stepped outside to get some fresh air. Injoo and Lars joined me, and then Injoo took us to spend the night at a sauna.
Yes, we spent the night in a sauna.
It’s a pretty cheap thing to do when you’ve stayed out after the subways stop running. It was at the top floor of a building. We paid 7,000 won each and entered the locker area where we put away our clothes and hung out with each other stark naked. I was too drunk to care.
We walked into the main bath area and washed off in separate showers before going into one of the bubbling hot tubs. There were different tubs there with varying degrees of heat and cold. They were nice — not Jacuzzis. They were marble lined, almost Roman-looking baths.
So I got into one of the hot tubs and followed Injoo into the next step hotter tub. I couldn’t take it, though. Too much of a wimp. But I sat on the wall of the cool pool and plunked myself in. It was friggin’ freezing and invigorating.
Injoo was our guide during this whole event. We then followed him to a cool looking sauna room with stone walls and shiny colored gem-looking things. After sweating in there, we went into another hot room with a thick layer of salt on the floor. So we sat in the salt for a bit and rubbed it into our skin. We then stepped out, pulled the cord for the cold shower to rinse it off, and jumped back into the cool pool. Injoo then went into the cold, cold tub. I got in there for a flash and jumped back out. That was enough of that.
We headed upstairs after drying off and getting dressed in the pajamas the place provided. There were more amenities up there, and it was co-habited by both men and women. There was a restaurant, a playroom for the kids, many massage chairs and massage parlors. But the place Injoo took us to was a wooden domed room that had extra oxygen pumped into it. There were people scattered all over the floor here. There were people scattered all over the floor everywhere up there. There were even some couples sleeping next to each other, holding hands. So, yeah, this was a place where people actually paid to sleep on the floor.
We each got a wooden block with a semicircle cut in the middle of it. These were our pillows. I placed my towel on it, lay down, and fell asleep within five minutes.
I awoke to “Resident Evil” playing on the TV and a crashing hangover. I left the guys there and headed home. Despite the hangover, the sauna experience made me feel really good and purified.
Katrina then happened, and my family is all from the Alabama Gulf Coast area. They’re all okay, but the area is half obliterated. They were lucky. Ironically, the cruise ship my mother and sister were one two weeks before is to be used as a shelter for hurricane victims.
Since Roberta has left for the States for three months, I have taken an extra load of classes and responsibilities. Her sister, though, has hired someone to help me manage the place, and she starts Monday. I hope it turns out alright. There are still many things to stabilize at the school. Enrollment has picked up. Because of a roadblock in scheduling, we started a new class this week, where we had five classes happening at once and only four teachers on the staff.
Injoo, Lars, and I went out for grilled pork on an outdoor patio with a little sprinkle of rain outside. We then got Lars’ LED light-up Frisbee and tossed it in a parking lot for a while. We then called it an early night. We’re planning on going on a hike up a mountain around here tomorrow. We were planning on going for the annual dogmeat excursion after that, but no one knows where the two reputable restaurants that we know of are located. We have an alternate plan, but I hope we don’t disappoint some who were really looking forward to the dog.