family meets korea!

i spent this easter weekend with my aunt and uncle and two of my cousins. they came to visit my cousin who is living and teaching English in Busan. so i spent the weekend in Busan with them! so wonderful! it was a bit surreal being in korea with all of them. we had a delightful time, laughing, lounging, snacking on all the goodies they brought us from America, and introducing them to all the wonders of Korea! they had a very "Korean" first day, including a temple visit complete with lots of photos, and a sam gyeop sal dinner. we went to a jim jil bang on their second day that was DIVINE! i've been to a few, but this jim jil bang tops all the rest of them by far!!! seriously!!! it's the one at the world's biggest department store in busan. i could have spent all day in there. it has a really big sunroof type thing covering the main lounging area, and a million different places to lay down, nap, lounge, read. it is really aesthetically designed...lots of greenery, awesome outdoor footbaths with rocks to massage your feet as you walk, an outdoor spa (only for the women) and saunas of all different temperatures with supposed different health benefits. :) they even have a movie theater! they quite enjoyed their first jim jil bang experience and were not intimidated by the nakedness!!!

they also observed early on that koreans tend to wear gloves a lot. so throughout the weekend we decided to kind of keep track of all the different kind of gloves we saw. we found that koreans have gloves for any and every sort of activity. here are some of the ones we observed: chesnut roasting gloves, exercise gloves, motorcycle delivery gloves, parking lot attendant gloves, cash register gloves, and many more i'm sure that are slipping my memory. we also went to a really pretty beach and went for a walk up a hill to a pagoda overlooking the ocean. and in korea, where there's a hill or park, there's outdoor workout equipment. it was a wonderful weekend. here's a video of them discovering korean workout equipment on this hilltop.^^