Back at Koror -- Day 28, you'll remember -- it's time for the letters to be opened and read. Steph settles in on a blanket to read her letters from her brothers, her sister-in-law, her nieces and nephews, her parents, and her boyfriend. Score! She apparently wound up with a total of twelve letters. As we watch her read her letter from someone named Linda (shout-out!), in which you can make out "I love you, I miss you, take care of yourself -- oh yeah, say hi to Jeff from me and Brianna" (hee), Steph explains that her family is really great and really positive. She says that they inspire her to try hard at everything, so this is exactly what she needs in order to pump her up for everything she has to face from here on out. She says that the women have talked about an alliance, but that she doesn't really know if that's going to work out or not. I love it that one of her letters has teeny little dense print, because that's how letters from me are, as you know if you've ever gotten one -- full of love and lots and lots and lots of words. "I will read these letters and I will think of these people, and I will go in there like wildfire, and I will win this. I know it." Aw. And? Not.

Next, Ian has better things to do than think about his family, because in honor of Jeff calling him out for stinking up the joint, he will be taking a bath. In fact, he calls it "bath day." I would think that with all the free time these people have, you wouldn't require a special day to be bath day, but apparently, Ian does. It explains a lot, frankly. He takes the little basket of cleaning products out into the water and starts to clean. He washes his hair. He washes his legs and his feet. He scrubs his knees. As he's out there, Gregg joins him. If you think this is getting kind of porny, you're actually right, and you only get righter when Ian tells Gregg that he could use a hand, because he can't see his back and can't see to get the dirt off. Ian interviews that this was in spite of his "monkey arms." Heh. So Gregg pitches in and takes the washcloth to Ian's back. On shore, A-Jen comments that it's "quite a picture out there, with the men bathing each other." BOYS TOUCHING! BOYS TOUCHING! "I think they could have asked a girl to loofah their backs if they wanted to," Jen says, apparently unable to believe that the guys missed out on an opportunity to dodge contact far less intimate than most of them have probably experienced regularly through sports. Katie at least makes a little more light of it: "So, Ian and Gregg had a little moment, down in the water," she says in her scandale! voice. "Maybe that's the secret alliance we don't know about! You never kno-ow," she sing-songs, in a way that's funnier than it sounds like it would be. Ian interviews that it was "a Grecian bath," and adds that while he was mocked, he's "comfortable with [his] sexuality." Heh. Tom wanders by while Ian is washing off, and Ian asks him whether he sees any major dirt spots on the back of Ian's neck. "No, there's not, uh, I'm not going to clean it for you, but there's, uh, you look nice and clean," Tom says. Tom does not add, "I have a firehouse to go back to after this, you know." That entire sequence is so dumb and played, to some degree, but they all kind of treated it like parody, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been. Besides, I think I could actually smell Ian through my television, so the bath was probably overdue.