My Korean friend and companion, Yang Hie, escorted me into a mute room with a crowd of Korean women bathing themselves. Soon Yang Hie led me through the meandering steps of soaping up, rinsing, soaking, scrubbing, rinsing, shampooing, rinsing, showering, scrubbing, steaming, cooling down, soaking, soaping up, rinsing, steaming, cooling down, and finally drying off. I observed no order of events; I followed the examples of the other women I saw.  

Many Koreans bathe in public bath houses once a week at a cost of 2,500 won or, as my favorite adult student rephrased it, "about three dollars." Koreans take bird baths three times during the week, and when Saturday or Sunday comes around they flock to the bath houses to shed layers of grime and dust and dead skin. I went because I wanted to soak my sore, mountain-ridden knees. At my home I have only a shower. The bath made me relaxed and new again.  

As the only foreigner in the place (with blond hair and blue eyes at that), I think I was spotted. While soaking in the hot tub, one seven-year-old fixed her gaze on my face from twelve inches away. I matched her stare. While scrubbing and rinsing at the well, another woman spied my reddened skin from the hot water and scrubbing. She forbid me to scrub anymore, and said my skin was too soft (though I doubt it). As a foreigner I am seen as a guest of the Koreans, incapable of doing as the Koreans either because I have "soft" skin, or because I don't speak the language, or because I look different.  

Silence is the best conversation in this meditative environment. Bearing the hot steam and the cold rush and bathing at my own pace invite self-reflective thinking, a time to get away from urban busy-ness. At the close of the hour, we wrapped our towels around or heads, dried off and dressed to suit the outside world again. Yang Hie went her way, and I carried on with my busy life.