If you have ever been to a public swimming pool in the States, and likely most other places as well, then you know the basic setup. You walk into the lobby area, sign up and get a key for a locker. The boys and girls need to split up to change before meeting back up in the pool.
In Korea the key gets you into two lockers. The first is a shoe locker. This one is only for your shoes. "Well can I lock my wallet and phone up?" I asked to my much more knowledgeable and Korean friends.
They kind of smiled at me, "You don't have to. This is for shoes."
"But can I?" I asked again, unwilling to leave my wallet and phone unprotected.
This time they snickered a bit, "This one is just for shoes."
I was perplexed. "What about everything else?!"
"You put that in your other locker."
Two lockers. If you don't want to look like a goober like I did then just put your shoes in the first locker and stop asking so many questions!
The next piece of advice?
"Don't be shocked," my friend said to me, turning back over her shoulder before opening the door to the locker room.
It was a locker room. Of course people were going to be changing. For me, a locker room is a place for the briefest of nudity before throwing on your workout clothes, in this case the required one piece swimsuit and swimming cap. But in Korea this is not the case. The locker room is a place for prolonged and drawn out nudity. Adjummas gossiped and lotioned up and blew their hair dry all while naked and sending glances to those of us who were clearly foreigners.
The friends with my were varying levels or Korean. One of them had a Korean passport and Korean parents, but spent only a few weeks in Korea at a time, and the other was Korean through and through, but had spent the last several years in the states. The former worried about stares from adjummas that might be judging her athletic build, a trait not held by many Korean women, while the latter was simply not accustomed to nudity.
Fully clothed, and as white as can be, I already drew attention. I desperately didn't want to be naked.
Sadly, the within the locker room you are not allowed to wear your swimsuit. This means that the general plan of action is to strip down naked and carry your items to the shower room where you will rinse off, still naked, and then slip on your swimsuit, cap, and goggles.
A Korean-Korean girl -born in Korea, raised in Korea, always been in Korea- informed us that we shouldn't worry about being naked, but we should worry about being yelled at by the adjummas if we wore our swimsuit in the locker room.
Most foreigners in Korea are Asian. I have gotten fairly good as seeing the differences between ethnicities, just like at home someone with Greek heritage will look different from someone with Swedish heritage, but if you want a fool proof way to spot the foreigners, simply go to a swimming pool. We will be the ones with the towels wrapped around us as we slip out of our clothes and slink, swimsuits in hard, to the shower room to wiggle our way into our swimsuits without allowing our towels to drop. This may not ring true for Europeans, as the Swedish girl in the club strode proudly about as naked as the Korean women, but those of European heritage are fairly easy to identify in Korea.
After the showers you are free to swim to your hearts content! Though be warned that Korean clubs are no joke. When they say "warm-up" they mean 400+ meters of rigorous freestyle stroke. And at the end of the session when they say "game" they mean relay race...
All in all, a wonderful experience. Culture shock does a body good.
No comments:
Post a Comment