The First Post... Must It Be Monumental?

Well, here it is... finally, my first blog post from Korea. I suppose it's actually my first blog post ever. Wow, that makes it sound so important, so monumental... I suppose I can only say that if you choose to proceed (you will indeed concede...) you take on full responsibility for any subsequent unpleasant side effects, whether physical or psychological, that should occur due to the imminent disappointment you may experience from this admittedly less-than-groundbreaking blog. Enjoy!

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Well, I have been here for two months, which makes it slightly hard to know exactly where to
start.

In these situations, Brian, I often find it helpful to start from the beginning...

Ah yes, of course... how silly of me. From the beginning then, shall we?

I chose the name Faintest Ink for my blog under the influence of what I believe (to the best of my knowledge) to be an old Chinese saying that goes something like, "the faintest ink is better than the sharpest memory." This statement has proved tragically true so often in my life that a really interesting book could probably be written from the memories of things in my life that I've forgotten, or at least allowed time to dull or otherwise alter. In an effort, therefore, to remedy that, and in keeping with the idea of the faintest ink (basically zeros and ones that I may or may not get to more often than once a year...), I humbly begin my online journal of my life in Korea. I hope my memories will be accurate, or at least that what offers itself to my memory for writing is at least more interesting than what really happened!

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24 Feb, 2009

I woke up Sunday morning after about 4 or 5 hours of sleep, due to some craziness that I walked into on Saturday night, and spent the whole day saying good-bye to my friends and family at Lake Parker Park during the day, and then at Shari's in the evening. I stayed up almost all night packing, and so only got about 2 or 3 hours of sleep before having to wake up and head to the airport for my 18.5 hour trip from Lakeland, Florida to Seoul, South Korea. I basically missed Monday, because I spent it chatting with Air Force kids, being amazed by the brilliant service rendered by the gorgeous flight attendants, and changing time zones in a small, cramped coach seat on a Korean Air flight. I arrived at the airport at around 5pm Tuesday, when I kept my friends waiting for me for an extra hour becaue I had to deal with the fact that Delta had "misplaced" my $2000 guitar...

It's now about 1am on Wednesday, and I'm standing naked in front of a mirror blow-drying my hairy body while being stared at unabashedly (read "having my equipment ogled") by a couple of rowdy 11-year old Korean kids. You see, I've decided to spend the night with my friends Brad and Nadan in a jjimjilbang, a Korean bath-house. It's a pretty amazing experience, to say the least. We started out by buying a ton of snacks at the corner store so we could get some discount coupons for the spa, then we turned in our shoes and went our separate ways, Brad and I to the steamy den of naked men, and Nadan to that supposed paradise that neither of us will probably ever be fortunate enough to walk into. I guess I could say that the three (or was it four) consecutive days of sleep deprivation caused me to not care that I was getting naked with one of my homies to go and sit in a huge public tub of steaming hot water and then to shower in the same big public room. I could say that, but I think anyone who knows me would know that I'd probably get naked pretty much anywhere anyway, if I could get away with it, so we'll dispense with that excuse for now. In any case, it was really nice to sit and soak for a long time, even though it was really uncomfortable to have my man bits unabasheldy stared at by every Korean in the room, not just the kids.

After leaving the shower area, Brad and I changed into our jjimjilbang uniforms (shorts-and-t-shirt sets... blue for boys, pink for girls) and headed for the common area where we met up with Nadan and tried to get some sleep. The sleeping accomodations consisted of a big open room circumscribed with hot saunas of all temperatures and stlyes, one ice room, and a snack bar. We each grabbed a mat and a foam or wooden (wooden!) block for a pillow and settled in for the night, blanketless. The room was quite warm, but for some reason, I found it difficult to get to sleep, uncovered, on the floor, and wearing a weird color-coded shorts set. Call me crazy, but I only got about 3 or 4 hours of sleep that night too.

One word of advice for the fellas who decide to sleep in a jjimjilbang: the floor is hard, wear briefs.