Brown Rice Green Tea

When I first came east I was quite excited about coming to a country that grows tea and has much better quality of tea than anywhere else in the world.  However, what I noticed in the first couple weeks when brewing myself a cup of green tea with a tea bag that I had found in my cabinet, I realized that the green tea here is not just green tea: Its green tea with brown rice.

I was quite disappointed with this unexpected flavor and felt it tasted much too "grainy" than a cup of regular green tea.  I later learned that you CAN buy plain green tea in bags or loose leaf, but you just have to watch the labels because most does have brown rice added to it.

But why do they add brown rice to begin with?  It has taken me over 6 months to learn the reason and today one of my Korean co-teachers explained it to me: Because it adds fiber, so it is better for your digestive system.

I suppose I'm not too surprised.  After all, Koreans in general are very health conscious and seem to have a natural remedy to prevent, help, or cure anything.

How Korea serves green tea

This is just one example to give an idea of how Koreans serve green tea, which is 녹차 (pronounced nok cha) in Korean. Tea bags are never used in restaurants (only on occasion). They typically have a slot in the tea pot to seep the tea leaves. If it is an individual cup, you often remove that to drink but in a pot (like this instance) not always.

Honestly, this one is probably the neatest I've had so far --I've never had a timer before! This one was of really good quality too, as it did not have grains added to it as many places here do for some reason. It is one of the things I may never understand is why they must ruin (in my opinion) such perfect quality tea.

A Sauna Experience

Oh Korea -- the lovely mountains, the delicious food, the convenient public transportation... yes, the public transportation is quite convenient.  However, when you think that nearly 50,000,000 people are living on this peninsula (actually that is only on HALF of this peninsula) you realize that they really have no other choice.  Considering the amount of people as well as considering that 25% of the whole world's population is living between the countries of China, Korea, and Japan, needless to say -- there's a lot of pollution and sometimes you can be reminded of the pollution through things like, well, acne.

I'm certainly not the only foreigner that has had this complaint, so it is clearly a matter of our change in environment.  I had tried several different products and some slight diet changes to see if this would make a change, but I had seemed to have no luck.  I was recommended by some peers to start going to the sauna twice a week.  Apparently several foreigners had a positive result and told me they had never had such good skin in their life.  So, I decided to start this weekly routine.

Now, to first explain sauna's in Korea -- it is not like any sauna you would go to in a western civilization.  Keep in mind that Koreans have this big "community" focus so they like to do, well, everything together as "one"... in this case that means (yep, you guessed it): to bath together.

Now, don't get the impression that they're necessarily "washing" one another (now that would probably cross a line) but this does mean that you basically walk around unclothed and use the heated room, showers, baths, hot tubs, etc.  If we had these in America, I'm sure most people would be uncomfortable sitting bare in a hot tub with their neighbor, but this is really normal here.

I can't say that I was necessarily uncomfortable in any of my visits (okay MAYBE the first time a little) but the part that always intrigues me about going is all the things I see these Koreans doing.  Today I was sitting in the heated room in an attempt to sweat enough to hopefully clear my skin, when a Korean comes in the room and sits on the floor.  She proceeds to sit in "lotus pose" and do a few "yoga-style" stretches.  As I watch her, I feel a bit like I should perhaps show some of my little yoga moves as well but, then again, who I am to kid?  Being an Asian, she likely knows a heck of a lot more about yoga and oriental medicine than I've ever been exposed to in my life.  This continues as I then migrate to the green tea bath to cool off and I have another Korean flapping her legs around a bit in what appears to help with circulation (perhaps?).

I will admit, this is the frustrating part about living in a foreign country and not knowing the language because I can't ask questions like  "What is that?", "What is that for?", "Why is that used?", etc. and even if I did know how to ask those few questions, I would have to know enough Korean to understand the answer.

The other things I've seen that has intrigued me a bit during my sauna experiences have been the face masks.  There is a worker always in the dressing room who makes facial masks completely from natural materials using eggs, cucumbers, honey, green tea, and other things that I'm not even aware of.  The last thing that I noticed was how some Korean women will put little "cups" on their back or stomach while in the sauna and bathing area, leave them on for a while, and then take them off.  I'm not sure if this is supposed to help with releasing toxins or what but maybe I will find out someday.