Living it up with Gabe and Ben

So for two weekends in January I was lucky enough to be able to hang out with fellow WM alums Gabe Kauper and Bennet Baldwin (left), in Suncheon (a city where Gabe was teaching in the southern part of Korea) the first weekend and in Seoul the next. While I couldn't hang out that much in Seoul because I was leaving for China about 12 hours after Gabe arrived, we had a blast the previous weekend in Suncheon. The three of us were in norebang (karaoke) for about 2 hours, singing our hearts out, and then we went around town buying snacks and eating in convenience stores, and we ended up in the jimjilbang (bathhouse/sauna) at 2am. At the jimjilbang we hung out in the showers/baths for a while (sans clothes), then put on the little shorts and shirts and went into the big common area where they had a snack bar, internet access, a norebang, massage chairs, little caves of different temperatures to hang out in, and the main floor area where people could hang out/sleep. By that time it was about 3am, and the place was jumping! There were probably around a hundred people in there, about half of them sprawled out asleep on the floor and the other half talking, laughing, and running around. Our plan was to sleep there, but sleeping straight on a hardwood floor with nothing but a little hard pillow for your head was not as easy as we had hoped (there were a few mats/blankets we saw, but they were all taken). So I ended up trying to sleep in one of the automatic massage chairs, and Ben and Gabe roughed it on the floor. While it wasn't the best sleep we'd ever had, we still loved the jimjilbang.

The next day we went and saw this big old Buddhist temple complex near the city, and while we were taking pictures we ran into Rose, my Korean co-teacher from my school in Seoul (which was about 4.5 hours away)! We hung out with her and her photography friends who she was down there with, and then Ben and I headed back to our respective cities. This picture is of one of the temple roofs. Also, we got to meet Gabe's foreign co-teachers, who we liked to refer to as "the hobbits". They were a unique bunch.

I also managed to get Ben and Gabe to do the "Victory"/"Peace" sign in this picture, which is ubiquitous in East Asian photos. Now I am posting the picture on the internet to shame them in front of the millions of viewers who visit my site. It's alright guys, I think we've all been there.
Sorry, no pictures from jimjilbang.