Saturday

On Saturday, Jessie and I took a tour with the Gwangju International Center. It sounded pretty interesting. A day trip for 10 000 won (roughly ten bucks), with lunch included. The tour was of a traditional aloe wine “brewery” and then a trip to a mountain-side spa and temple.
The tour started, in typical Korean fashion, 45 minutes late. The buses were delayed for some reason, and we were brought to wait in the office headquarters of the aloe wine company. It was pretty brutal, because it basically meant that we were being made to wait in a tiny conference room (there were about 30 or so of us), including the children that belonged to the foreign families in attendance. So the kids had nothing to do, the twenty somethings there just laughed, because we are all used to the school system, so pretty much nothing surprises us anymore.
Finally, we poured onto the bus, and were driven an hour and a half to the aloe wine factory. Wow! Talk about traditional! The place was basically a scaled-up version of the Bay Brewing Center, with slightly less tradition (for those of you not from North Bay, the Brewing Center is a DIY booze place where my friend Jim worked in high school). Yes, just like in the old days, using methods steeped in tradition, the wine was aged in a warehouse in large stainless steel drums separated by steel catwalks, and then pumped by small plastic tubing into bottles. From there, “ajumas” (old ladies) carefully (out of respect for tradition) hold the bottles up to an ancient machine that automatically screws the safety caps into place. Then, using imported ancient Chinese technologies, the labels are applied to the bottles as they move along a “conveyor belt”. Man, I’m so glad I caught all of this tradition!
For those of you who have never been on an Asian tour, let me fill you in on the experience you are missing.
First, there will be about 100 to 150 of you, which is much more efficient than an equivalent tour in Canada, which probably would have had 6 to ten people. A man will speak to you through a megaphone directed at the chest of a man seven rows in front of you. When he is done, three more men will be introduced, because anyone who has a big title attached to their job MUST be introduced! And yes, don’t worry, they have a prepared speech! Then, you will be ushered through a tour that most closely resembles a conga line that is three thick. If you should hesitate for even a moment to get a better look at something that may interest you, you will be left behind. If someone notices you falling behind and cares to help, they will gently guide you with a hand on your inner thigh, which they will use to guide you from behind. If you think “Oh man, there are a lot of people on that platform, maybe I should let them get off before I try to get on!” an old lady will immediately move in to fill the space you have created, like water into a brine-filled dialysis tube. But don’t fret! You may not get a chance to see, but it’s just a stainless steel drum filled with dried berries, and it smells terrible anyways! Should you care to comment, as you are used to being able to speak freely now about anything without fear of being understood, you will be overheard by the one ajuma who could understand, who will give you dirty looks for the rest of the tour.
After the grand tour, we were directed upstairs for free samples! Wow, aloe soju is perhaps the vilest substance that has ever entered my mouth. Wait, forget I said that, so that you are happy when you get the gift pack I got for Christmas.
Then, back onto the bus for another hour. The day was looking better, the free lunch was coming up. It was really good.
Oh, did I say we were going to a spa? I meant public baths! Hope you like being nude!That caught a lot of foreigners off guard, myself included, because we were told that it would be a good idea to bring swimming trunks and a towel, so I thought “Cool! Cheap massages and swimming! Whee!”
The funniest thing is that Koreans don’t even think twice about it, and it doesn’t even register with them that being nude for a couple of hours would be weird to a foreign person! You see, public baths are here as a result (or so I have been told/read) of rapid development. Now, most homes have the infrastructure for people to bathe at home every day, but that’s pretty recent. So, even though most can bathe at home, they still go to public baths to get their scrub on, I guess because that’s how they remember doing it with mom and dad.
Well, I was a little freaked out, but the key here is to go with the Korean flow, as they say (they being other expats with more experience). It was a little weird to walk in for the first time, but once you’re in, there’s no turning back. That’s right, you just hop into the huge hot tubs with all the other naked men. True, the conversation kind of sucked (what with them all being Korean, and not understanding English) but I eventually caught up to some foreigners in the sauna.

“So, you’re a physics professor at Kwangju University! How do you like that?”

“I’m up here sailor”

So, it was a little weird.

We were there for almost two and a half hours, which turned out to be too long for most of the non-Koreans, who quickly bored of the whole bathing thing, as we had all bathed that morning. And really… communal soap? Not too sure about that.
We went to a beautiful temple after that. It was on Jiri mountain, on the other side of the mountain from the spa (Jimjilbang). They had huge gold statues of Buddha, that must have been about 20 feet tall, and huge wooden painted statues of what appeared to be rock-star Buddhas (He was a jukebox hero, oh-whoa-whowoowhoa!). It was alos home to the tallest stone lamp in the world, which was pretty cool, I guess, if you’re into that sort of thing. If you’re into 6 m tall lamps, you’ll have to check out Jiri-san. The temple grounds were really very beautiful, and it was a great end to the day.

Back in Kwangju (a very long bus ride later) we went out with the other ex-pat teachers from Canada, as well as the Russian professors to this Italian place. There was a room capacity mix-up, so the professors and their families all wound up in one room, and the conversation teachers all wound up in another. It was a really good dinner, and very very cheap. A couple set, which included a pasta dish, a pizza, a salad, garlic bread (never came) and drinks was only (approximately) $23! And it was really good, which was the best part.

That’s a good place to stop I think. MMmmmmmm…