찜질방

여러 친구가족들과 어울려 약 3.5 시간 운전해서,  귀 빠진뒤 처음으로  Atlanta suburb 에 있는 찜질방이란 곳을 가보았다.
It is a bit interesting place; there is no privacy as everybody gets naked to change and take a shower or sauna.  The place is huge, and decorated with many interesting stuffs.  For instance, the benches in the 찜질방 hall were big logs.  Several specialized 찜질방s were built; 숯방, 보석방, 소금방, 얼음방, 등등.  My favorite was 'steam sauna', which reminded me of 한증탕 in public bath in Korea a while ago.

In addition to Koreans or Korean-Americans, there seems to be a fair number of people with (Northern?) European heritage. It was a new experience for me as well as my wife and son.  My son particularly seemed to be quite impressed.
We spent several hours at 찜질방, stayed a night at a hotel nearby, went to hair-salon/shop and came home safely.  We all felt like Hillbillies visiting 서울. ㅎㅎ.
On the way home, I felt so good.  On the other hand, I felt guilty for our younger generations.  ㅠㅠ.  Considering the amount of energy used by this kind of place in a single day, our generation invented so many things like this and has been exhausting all global energy reserves.
How long can we sustain??  That will be a (REALLY) serious cencern that our children's generations should find an answer to survive.

Anyway....