A Night at the Jjimjilbang
By Chloe Sferra, a second year ETA in Gumi, Gyeongsangbuk-do Mud clogs my nose, seeps into my ears and piles up at the base of my eyes. The chunks of clay and water are thrown at me with no intention except to fly into my mouth and choke me. I can only clear it off long enough to take one more breath before it once again blinds me. I sit huddled in a ball, mud up to my shoulders, and accept this punishment. I’m circled by strangers who happily drown me. They scoop the mud up with their hands and kick it into the air with their feet so it comes down on me like rain. I close one eye, hoping to protect it, and keep the other open as a witness. I dig my fingernails into the clay on the ground, clawing at it, but there is nowhere I can dig to that will offer me an escape. I keep my head down for the sake of survival. My friend next to me, also huddled in a ball, whispers something to herself. Was it a prayer to get us out of this pit? When it finally comes to an end, I use my dirt-stained hands to regain my sight, wiping mud away with more mud. I leave the scene hand in hand with the strangers. This is why we all came here. We came to play in the mud, rolling around like pigs, laughing and choking and whining in it until we rinse it off briefly, only for a moment, before jumping back into the mess. “They say it’s good for you,” my friend says to me. “The mud of Boryeong has special minerals that help your skin.” “Who is ‘they’?” I ask. When my friend suggested attending the Boryeong Mud Festival less than 24 hours ago, I thought she knew something I didn’t. Maybe she has some omnipresent foresight because she swore it would be a great weekend. A weekend full of rest and relaxation, which is the kind we needed. To the outside eye, the mud festival looks like a playground. It has slides and games, food and beer, spas and yoga rooms. When you are done splashing around in the mud you can run across the street and splash around in the ocean. Through clay, water and salt, you leave cleansed, softened and relaxed. That’s how it’s supposed to go. When I leave the festival, there are still traces of dirt on me. My bright orange shirt has turned dull, and my white hat has discolored to a grayish brown. It stays under my fingernails, and my hair is stiff from it. There is something else too. I shift a little and can feel it. The dirt has found its way into my mind. It sits there like a lump in my chest. My blood feels clouded. I first felt this different kind of mud when I returned to my placement in February, picking up right where I left off. But things started to change bit by bit, and I could feel the weight inside me grow. With each person I expected to see now gone, and each experience I thought would be the same now altered, the mass got bigger. These days it is so big that I can recognize it flowing through my veins, thicker than my blood. I hate this feeling. I hate that I don’t know how to get rid of it. I hate that I can’t even name it. All I know is that it feels eerily similar to how this mud feels on my skin. Dry, thick, suffocating. Like the mud, it hides in secret places around my body and won’t go away. The dirt outside of me and the dirt inside of me. I want to be rid of them both. “Let’s go to a jjimjilbang,” my friend says. “The cold water pool there is good for you.” Does she, too, see all my muddiness? There is only one jjimjilbang in this coastal Korean town. I wonder why the rest have disappeared. The Korean public bathhouses, known as jjimjilbang, are places meant for healing, cleaning and relaxation. For just a few thousand won, around 10 U.S. dollars, one can have 12 hours of access to a range of experiences. A jjimjilbang relies on traditional Korean medicine techniques to allow each visitor to heal their body. Healing, yes, that is what I need. I follow my confident friend to this magical place. She tells me all about the jjimjilbang during our long taxi ride. I listen closely, taking her words as gospel. She rattles off what to expect: karaoke rooms, gaming computers, restaurants. She goes back and forth talking to me and the taxi driver. To me, she mentions the common room where we will sleep in matching pajamas next to more strangers. To the taxi driver, she talks about the other closed-down spas. To me, a description of the must-try sweet rice drink, sikhye. To the taxi driver she gossips about previous passengers he has met. By the sound of it all, maybe a jjimjilbang is exactly the answer I need. The cleanliness I desire must be there. Like a hero searching for hidden treasure at the end of a quest, I will surely find what I am looking for too. When we arrive, she instructs me on the final expectations from the spa: the segregated bath houses complete with showers, hot tubs, cold pools, saunas and scrubbing stations. Store your items in your designated locker and strip down in the open locker room space before entering the bath house. Then, let the cleaning and healing begin. Past midnight, the otherwise busy spa is quiet. Some people are already asleep in the common room and the bathhouse is still. We undress and tip toe cautiously from the locker rooms to the showers. Tonight, in the female-only bath house area, there are just four other people. There is a