Mudfest!

Last weekend, Adam, Morgan, and I got to experience one of the most interesting festivals yet, the Boryeong Mud Festival! It takes place at Daechon Beach, which is about a 3 hour train ride Southwest from Seoul. Every year thousands of people come to have fun in the mud, which is exactly what we did! The mud here is famous, it is said to be great for your skin. The mud from Boryeong is sold in all types of products- soaps, shampoos, and lotions. This is one of the biggest festivals in Korea and also the one attended by the most foreigners. At times it was easy to forget we were in Korea, but I am happy to say that I saw plenty of Korean people attending the festival as well. It was a great time!Here is a picture of Adam and I, pre-mud. The weather was absolutely gorgeous! A slight breeze, high 80's, and an ocean to jump into whenever you need to cool off!
The whole beach looked like this. There were people milling around everywhere. The umbrellas are where the mud was kept. The beach was full of muddy people, sunbathers, swimmers, and all sorts of interesting characters. Along with wearing the mud, there were also mud slides, mud pools, mud wrestling, a mud prison, and mud obstacle courses.
Let the muddiness begin! I am giving Morgan a mighty nice mud paint job!
Here he is returning the favor...
The finished product. Once the mud dries it is hard to smile or move because your skin feels so tight! We spent the whole day getting muddy, then going for a swim in the ocean, and then getting muddy again.
Once nightfall came we all cleaned up and the fun continued. The festival brings in some good bands to perform at night and they also put on an amazing fireworks show, choreagraphed to music. At night the tide goes out really far and people are wandering all over the beach. Later the tide came up really far again, but everyone was too busy having fun to care. The beach is illuminated in these huge eerie blue colored spotlights which casts an interesting ambiance over the beach. We spent the evening wandering around the beach and talking to people, playing in the ocean, visiting random campfires on the beach, and spinning in circles and falling over in the sand...
And you can't forget the sparklers!
The next day we took advantage of all the fresh seafood restaurants right along the beach. This restaurant specialized in shellfish. We had a lunch of grilled oysters, snails, clams, and mussels. They are thrown from the fresh seawater right onto the grill. The pop open slightly when they are cooked. When they open you grab them off the grill, wearing a glove on one hand so you don't get burned, and you pop the top shell off and grab the meat out with your chopsticks. I wasn't sure how this was all going to taste but I actually really enjoyed it! It was definitely the freshest meal I've had in a while! It was also nice to eat while overlooking the ocean. After lunch we all piled back onto the bus to head back to Seoul. This has been one of my favorite weekend experiences in Korea so far! Today (Tuesday) is a holiday for me, so I am spending the day relaxing. One and a half more weeks of school then it's off to Hawaii! I can't believe my first semester of teaching is almost over! Hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the summer!

pictures from Ulsan

As promised, here are some pictures from my weekend in Ulsan... Jinny and Jo swimming.
This is the outside of the Minbok we stayed in. The older couple that owned it had their house right next to our place. The big pile in the middle is either garlic gloves drying or maybe pea pods, I can't remember.
Straight and to the point... smoking kills!
volleyball, anyone?
The beach was really rocky, which made it hard to walk on, but it was very beautiful!



These are the platforms that people did everything on, eat, sleep, cook, and hangout.

sunburn, anyone?

I am sitting here, listening to the rain and distant thunder, feeling refreshed! Rain always brings a refreshing feeling for me, a cool breeze is here with the rain today and all the dirt of the city is being washed away!

Speaking of refreshing, I also had a very refreshing and rain free weekend. I was fortunate to spend a much needed relaxing weekend away from Seoul at the beach! My friend Jinny, who is a scuba instructor, invited Adam and me to accompany her to Ulsan, a city on the southeast tip of Korea. Lack of funds prevented Adam and I from obtaining a scuba certification that weekend, but we did get a chance to lay on the beach, jet ski, banana boat, read and relax, and spend some time experiencing a different side of Korean life- life outside of the city, all while getting a horrible sunburn!!

Life in the city of Seoul is very fast paced. People are always in a hurry to get where they are going. Living here and working in an English school make it very easy to put studying Korean on the back burner. I always have good intentions to study, but never enough time. However, here in Ulsan we were the only two foreigners. Despite the stares, partly from being foreign and partly from our severely red skin, it was nice to be truly immersed amongst Koreans. Jinny and one of her friends that joined us both speak English fluently so it was nice to have a translator. I found that I learned a lot of Korean words and phrases just from being surrounded by the language all weekend. I wonder how much I would know by now if I didn't live in Seoul, or if I actually studied. We stayed at a little beach resort that the Hyundai Corporation puts up for its workers. Jinny's scuba boss works for Hyundai and spends his summer at this beach making sure it is run smoothly and that the lifeguards and rescue workers are doing their jobs. The resort was not a typical resort you would find in the States. There were no pools, or even a hotel for that matter. This was the closest thing to camping I have seen yet. Basically, there is a huge area set up with a big canvas-ish covering over some poles. Underneath this area are lockers and a bunch of platforms about 2 feet off the ground set up. People basically do everything on these little platforms. Everyone puts their stuff in a locker. At nighttime you grab your blankets and sleep on the platform. During the day you cook and congregate on your platform. There are bathrooms and showers on either side of the area, along with a communal kitchen with burners and sinks for people to do their cooking. This area is set up right along the beach. On the beach is a volleyball court and areas to rent tubes, banana boats, or jet skis. There is a little store and a little restaurant nearby as well. I have never seen anything like this before, it was definitely interesting. We all stayed in a minbok nearby. A minbok, as I said in an earlier blog, is basically an open room with blankets and pillows in the corner. When you are ready to sleep you grab your blankets and lay on the floor to sleep. It is a very cheap way to travel. This minbok was a house with a bathroom and 2 rooms, and a kitchen/living area. We didn't use the kitchen at all, we just slept. Definitely a weekend well spent!

Summer break is almost here! I can't believe how fast the time has gone by! This upcoming weekend I am heading to Daechon, along with about 30,000 other people, to go to the Mud Festival. After this weekend we have Tuesday the 17th off of school, then a staff bonding trip the next weekend. The weekend after is summer break!! I had been planning on going to Japan for break. However, since all of Korea has off of school for this week as well, it makes for a very busy travel season. We were planning to go by ferry and found out they were all booked. Plane tickets ended up being too expensive by this point. Now I am heading to Hawaii to see Jason! I am definitely looking forward to a week in Oahu! I love Hawaii!!!

I hope you all are feeling refreshed and having a great summer! I will post some pics as soon as I get some from Adam, since I still don't have a camera!