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No nudes is good news

I have been in Korea now for nearly four months. Surprisingly, I haven't had that much difficulty acclimating. The climate is the same as in New York. In fact, it's been cold enough lately that I went local and have taken to wearing a surgical mask while riding my bike. I have been eating Korean food for the past 15 years, so I haven't had to adjust my diet (although I have forgotten how to use a fork); and I now even eat kimchi at most meals. My language skills are slowly coming along; I am no longer completely oblivious to what is being said at the weekly pastor meetings.

Yet there is one local custom with which I don't expect to ever be comfortable--that being the sauna. First of all, forget the image of "sauna" that you have from your health club. We're not talking a bunch of guys wrapped in towels while they sit in a room the size of a jail cell and stew in their own sweat, as awesome as that sounds. No, Korean saunas have a rhythm and a ritual all their own, which I learned when I visited one with a group of pastors from the church.

Unlike saunas in an American health club, which merely punctuate the health club experience, Koreans saunas are an event unto themselves. To begin with, you must take off your shoes before approaching the front desk. The clerk at the desk then hands you standard-issue t-shirt and shorts (powder blue for men, pink for women) and the key to your locker. At my locker I began to change into the t-shirt and shorts when I noticed that everyone around me was going au naturel. A creeping dread began to wash over me, and then my fears were realized when one of the pastors approached me wearing nothing more than his glasses and a smile. "Are you comfortable being in a Korean sauna?" he asked. I fixed my eyes on his face and responded,  "When in Rome...." 

The rest of the experience was a dreamlike blur...shower, hot tub of a sort (which a young child treated as his personal swimming pool), steam room, and back to shower before finally changing into my powder blues and making an evening of it in the lounge, including surviving a ride in the massage chair. All in all, an interesting evening, and one that I hope not to revisit anytime soon. 

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