Sunday, April 4, 2010

Great Salsa News and A Good Weekend

The arrival of warm weather is good news in and of itself, but I also received some wonderful news from my salsa academy. I have been invited to join the competitive team, which I accepted without hesitating.

I have a strange way of thinking that when I do something, I want to do it at the highest level. I'm certainly not the best at everything, but I always want to work hard and be as good as possible. So this salsa competitive team is the next step for me to becoming a good dancer.

The competition is in June, and we're doing a dance that a previous bamboo team performed. You can check it out again, here.

There aren't more days added to my dance schedule, but the practices will be more intense. It's a more complicated dance, and I need to work very hard -- even on my basics -- in order to do this well.

On Friday night, after getting my good news, Jeong Mi and I went to a Jimjjilbang. It's the first time I've been to one, even though I've lived here a year and five months now. A jimjjilbang is basically a public bath house. There are showers, hot tubs, saunas, body treatments and massages available. They're also equipped with entertainment like TVs, game rooms, restaurants and , of course, alcohol.

We went to the only one in Yeonsu-dong. Ridia, my wonderful co-teacher, advised against it because it's a few years old. That means it's not as up to date with the best, new stuff. But it was our only option at that time of night.

It was a fun time, too. I was a bit confused at first, but after I figured it out, all went smoothly. The first step is to separate into the mens' and womens' sides. There, you shower, bathe and have the option of getting in the sauna and hot tub. After that, you head down to a commons area to meet. Jeong Mi got some body scrub, so I ended waiting for her along for about an hour. That was the only downside. But I read a book and listened to some music, so it was relaxing.

The price is good as well. For both of us, and including her scrub, it only cost 16,000 won. I still don't see the draw to the extent of Koreans going all the time and spending entire days/nights there, but I could see myself going once a month or so to relax.

Here is the web site for the place we went. It's called Jambo Fitness Sauna. Warning: It plays annoying music and I couldn't find the off switch.

The rest of the weekend was good as well because of the nice weather. A group of us played basketball Saturday night, and beat three different Korean teams who wanted to challenge the Americans.  And on Sunday, we had a nice game of football.

On Sunday night, I wrapped up the weekend by meeting Jeong Mi for dinner and a few drinks.

As far as weekends go, it doesn't get much better than that.

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