1,687 is the magic number.

As you might guess by the frequency of my recent blog posts, I am trying to avoid the massive piles of papers to grade, comments to write, and student excuses to address that accompany the last week of classes before finals. Accordingly, I took the night off and went to the jimjilbang.

In my attempts to avoid real work, I have have also completed the following pointless calculation:

I have now spent approx. 16 months in Korea. I tend to go to the jimjilbang approximately one-two times a month:
16 x 1.5=24

Each time I go to the jimjilbang, I probably encouter a minimum of 45 people in the sauna area:
24 x 45=1080

Several times I have far exceeded my 1.5 times a month (ex: vacations):
1080 + 3(45)=1215

When I was in Pusan I went to a MASSIVE jimjilbang that can hold 2000+ people:
1215 + 250 extras=1455

The next day I went to a jimjilbang with hundreds of extras crammed in:
1455 + 117 extras=1572

Can't forget the public school vacation jimjilbang experience last year (where probably 3 dozen children asked Kirsten and I over and over again how old we were, where we were from, and what our names were)
1572 + 115=

Approximately 1,687 KOREAN WOMEN HAVE SEEN ME NAKED in the last year and a half. About 3 dozen of them are my friends. Another 200 (at least) have asked me where I am from. Wow. Who would have guessed?