First, I woke up really early to go to a jimjilbang, which is basically a Korean traditional bath house. Jimjilbangs are open 24 hours and often serve as hostels too because people can just sleep on the bamboo floor mats in the coed areas at night. Basically what happened when we went (and what happens in most Jimjilbangs) is you go in and pay a flat fee and you get a change of clothes and two towels. Then you go take your shoes off and collect the key from the shoe locker. After that you hand the lady at another front desk thing your shoe locker key and she puts it in a cubby with the corresponding number to the real locker key she gives you, which is big enough to hold all of your stuff (given that you have an average sized backpack, etc.). The lockers are in seperate female only/male only rooms where you undress, shower, and then change into te jimjilbang uniform if you want to go into the coed part. However, in the naked only shower room there are more things to do as well- this place had about four or five different mineral baths/hot water baths that all had different healing properties, and then there were also 2 hot saunas and one cold one, along with a cold bath. Since it's supposed to be healthy to go from hot things to cold things (since it makes you sweat faster in the hot thing, which is the healthy part) we alternated between the hot saunas/hot pools and the cold pool. Sadly, the coed and female only cod saunas were closed so we couldn't go in there, but it was fine! After exploring in the female only area we rinsed off and then put on the sauna clothes, which were huge and looked like prison uniforms haha.
Then we went out to explore the coed part of the jimjilbang, which held the restaurant/cafeteria type place, the sauna rooms, and then various other things. The first floor had the three sauna rooms and also one room that looked like a sauna but had a suspiciously small door and so we opted not to go in. Outside if the saunas there were a bunch of people sleeping on roll out bamboo mats, with wooden blocks for pillows (they were actually really comfy- wooden blocks with a little indent for the base of your skull). There were also massage chairs down there as well. It was really quiet so we just tiptoed around because it was still the morning and we didn't want to interrupt anyone's sleep. Then we went upstairs and explored the second floor, which had a computer room, a manhwa (Korean manga) library section, an Oxygen room (which was dark and I think was meant for sleeping), some race car arcade games, and then a "VIP Lounge" where you could pay five dollars to sleep in a really comfy chair bed with a personal TV attached to it. The bath house we went to was by the World Cup stadium and wasn't very touristy so no one there spoke any English. We can understand pretty well (or at least pool our abilities to create a decent understanding of what's happening) and there was a really nice (but forceful lol) ajumma in the jimjilbang that kept telling us what to do haha. We were so lost at first but that ajumma definitely helped us out (and didn't tolerate our awkwardness about the whole thing haha).
After the jimjilbang we went back to Sinchon and picked up down chicken and smoothies from the Hyundai department store. We ate on a bench outside of the station and then headed to school early because WE HAD A MEETUP WITH TALK TO ME IN KOREAN PLANNED! Talk to me in Korean is a website/YouTube channel that makes awesome videos about Korea, Korean culture, and learning the Korean language. Their website is so thorough and helpful and has so many resources, it's so awesome and if it weren't for then I would have known no Korean before I came here. Since most of our group watched their lessons before the trip a lot of people showed up for the meetup! It was really nice of then to take time out of their day to meet us, and I really appreciated it! We hung out for 30-45 minutes and talked and took pictures, and it was so much fun! Of course I took a selfie with everyone before taking a real picture hahaha.
I definitely recommend TTMIK for anyone who wants to self study Korean, or for anyone who is just interested in their culture videos! They are awesome <3
After that fun event we had some time before class so we ran and got bubble tea before class.
Class was fun, and everyone sang happy birthday in Korean to me during break which was fun I guess lol.
After class a group of us went to karaoke and then got chicken afterwards! The karaoke place was so cute and awesome and adorable and FREE ICECREAM so it was basically the best. We had to take off out shoes before we went into the hallway, and the floor if the hallway was glass display cases full of toys!
The rooms were also really adorable~
We sang for about an hour, but got extra minutes for free as service! After singing and free Ice cream we went and got delicious fried chicken and then headed home. All in all it was a great birthday in Korea and I couldn't have asked for anything better! Now that our stay is drawing to a close I can't help but think everyday that I don't want to leave π°π·
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