Runnin' the 10k

In a mere two days, I'll be running in my first race ever, the Adidas Hangang Marathon! I'm not doing the marathon (bitch, please) but the 10K. I'm still super excited, super nervous, and super scared. My training has dropped off a bit because of knee pain but I'll finish.

(My deepest fear is that I'll have to get a ride with the pace car but hopefully it won't come to that!)

I've been thinking about training for a half marathon. There's one every year near the South-North Korea DMZ. That would be pretty damn cool.

Change in summer travel plans. I'm going to wait to go to Norway with my mom in a couple years and instead I'll worth through the summer and just have the one week off when the school goes on holiday. I'll use that time to climb Mt. Fuji (one of my things to do before I die) and visit friends in Osaka. At the end of my contract in February, I'll go to India for a couple months to visit the places I haven't been yet before heading back to Seattle. I like this change a lot and I'm quite excited.

"This Would Make A Great Vagina Monologue"

Last week, I had the oddest experience I've ever had in Korea...possibly ever.

No, wait, that would be the rat temple in India.

Anyhow, my friend Mary had another friend, Pennie, visiting from New Zealand and Mary wanted to show her a good time. She got it into her head that we should take Pennie to the 찜질방 and get our fannies smoked.

Say what!

That's right. We went to get our fannies smoked. And how did it go, you ask? Well...we went and did our normal 찜질방 thing, which in and of itself is a bit weird but you're completely naked and I had just met Pennie two days before. However, one quickly gets over it at 찜질방 and we had a great time steaming and scrubbing. Next, we went upstairs and put on our pajamas and went to the fanny smoking station.

Here's where it got a bit weird. imagine a large rectangular box with one side missing and a crude toilet seat on the top. Inside the box was a hot plate. Once we saw that hot plate, Pennie and I got a bit apprehensive but Mary bullied us inside. The very bored looking woman who ran the place indicated that we had to disrobe so the three of us were naked and crammed in the room with the woman while she prepared the pots of herbs and tea and stuff that would be smoked. When she finished up, she handed us these mauve plastic smock things that looked like a shower curtain. We put them on and then sat on the seats and waited for the magic to happen.

It felt very silly at first because nothing was happening. The three of us could not stop cracking up and we felt kinda bad because we didn't want to be disrespectful but seriously! We were having our fannies smoked! A couple minutes in, Mary said "Oh!! It's getting really hot!" and sure enough the steam was totally burning in...very tender places. We told the woman and she had as raise our feet onto the box so that our knees were up by our ears and we looked completely ridiculous. To add to the comedy, my glasses kept steaming up from the smoke that leaked out the neck hole of my smock. Hilarious.

We sat there for 45 minutes, constantly asking how much time we had left. It got super hot and my legs were cramping and we were sweating EVERYWHERE! Mary swears she was burned down there. Finally, the woman let us go after cackling at us stupid foreigners. We hauled ass back to the showers then headed upstairs to the rooms. We decided we needed a beer (yes, they sell beer in Korean saunas) and sessions in the massage chair in order to recover from our experience. It helped, a lot.

So yes...that was my fanny smoking experience. We cannot stop telling people about it and we never seem to find it less funny. I don't think I'll ever do it again but I don't regret it at all.