Day 23 and Day 24- Weather, Ego boosts and Noise

So, as I was without a computer for the past day and a bit, I was forced to wait until now to post about the events of the days. The event on Saturday (23) was this event called the Boryeong Mud Festival, which is probably one of the larger tourism draws that Korea has. Now, said mud festival is located in (you guessed it!) Boryeong, which is located in the province of Chungcheongnam-do, which is located in the red part of the map on the side bordering the Yellow Sea (the western side of the map) and towards the southern part of the province. Here's a map showing the area. Now, what does one do a a mud festival? There were a number of things to do there, namely obstacle courses, mud wrestling and chilling out by the Yellow Sea. However, I haven't described the conditions of how we got there.

We hopped into a tour bus very early in the morning (for college kids): 8:00 AM. This is a time that most college kids don't know exist on Saturdays (and occasionally Sundays as well). It took us three hours or so to get from Seoul. Here's the map for a comparison: Which shouldn't have taken the full three hours to get there and back, but then again we were on a tour bus with a tour guide who didn't have very good English who felt compelled to tell us about Seoul as we blew out of there, so the time felt like three hours if it wasn't that.

Oh, also, I forgot to mention: it was raining- quite hard. That doesn't sounds that bad, especially considering that I was going to get wet anyways in the mud (alright that is true, I suppose) but when gale force winds and not the warmest temperature are added to the equation, it feels a lot less like a mud festival and a bit more like torture by mud. When we arrived at the festival with the aforementioned wind, heavy rain and temperature, the guide and our program head tried to be enthusiastic "C'mon guys! You are just going to get muddy and wet anyways!" to be met with grumbles and growls from all parts of our tour bus. Now, you may accuse me of being a poor sport, however, I'd like to see anyone accusing me of that actually there first.

So, we disembarked the bus to the pouring rain and I had a bit of a tag-along after me- this guy from Kazakhstan named Elbol (pronounced like Elbow- yes, really). I got separated from the rest of the group who I hung out with (NOT people from my college, I will add) but other various people (Jin, Brian, June, etc.). Anyways, I shrugged and figured "Why not?"

Elbol had never seen the ocean or any sort of sea before, so we went around there. I was stunned to see a couple tide pools complete with living starfish and a few anemones. It was amazing. The rain lightened up as we explored the beach and we headed back towards the festival.

Festival is sort of a loose term as it was just a couple different things to do (a few slides, a few obstacle courses, a place to mud-wrestle and the ocean itself) but I was surprised to see so many foreigners (read: Americans) there as well. I just found myself wondering why on earth anyone would travel halfway around the globe for this? Sure it was a deal more fun when the rain let up (it was, I'll be honest), but why visit Korea just for this?

So, feeling adventurous and not having gotten any mud yet, I walked with Elbol as well as Jin, Brian and Jihoon (he's studying at my university next year) towards a place where we heard to go to get muddy. We got there and it's people throwing mud all over the place, either balls of mud or just chunks. Now, this may sound rather tame at first, however, there was some poor guy who was trying to drive by this crowd of people and his car got slammed with mud. He got out to try to protest and was met with some mud to the face. The mud wasn't lightly tossed either; it was pelted. This felt quickly less like a friendly mud fight and more like something out of everyone's favorite William Golding novel.


After hightailing it out of there, I decided I'd try out the whole (their exact phrasing) "mud coloring." Basically you walk up to the stand and whomever is working by the mud paint paints your skin with varying different colors. Now, I was thinking, perhaps, that by some odd chance I'd end up looking like a certain ghost of Sparta or perhaps like a certain Scotsman. However, this did not appear to be as it was clear that the people working the booths wouldn't be taking requests and also that there was no white paint (only red, green, blue and yellow). I had a few pictures taken, though I do not have access to them right now as they are on Elbol's camera. Rest assured that they will be up by the end of the week. I honestly don't even know what I looked like, except for my head was yellow and at least half of my torso was red. We'll find out soon.

Right, so I jumped in the Yellow Sea when it was time to leave to wash off all of the mud. It worked surprisingly well, so all is well that ends well.

Our group trekked over to a hotel..no, excuse me, motel that was somewhat nearby Boryeong. The motel was possibly..not the best. But hey, it was free, though I do have to make some...comments about our living accommodations. For one- our room was roughly fifteen feet by fifteen feet and contained no beds but rather one mattress. Apparently this was what the college had decided as appropriate living space for four guys to squash for the night. Not cool. Especially when a few rooms had only one person inside of them. Thankfully, due to the good nature of a few people and random shuffling of others, I ended up with only Jim (from my college) in my room, which I was alright with. Jim is probably the only guy from my school who doesn't irk me and I actually find him to be a nice guy. Campbell (as mentioned before) is rude and was the guy in the aforementioned post (though I don't believe explicitly named) and Taylor is a guy with the physique of Fat Albert and the ego of Kanye West. Not a pretty combination. He has this believe that he is always the most clever person in the room and gets especially loud when talking to the ladies. It's...annoying.

Anyways, neither Taylor nor Campell were in my room that night, so it was all good.

Dinner that evening was Korean BBQ which basically was Korean people grilling slabs of pork, chopping it up with scissors and us eating it. It was fantastic and after a long day in the rain, it was needed.


I ended up talking to the German prof again and strangely enough a Korean girl in German. NO, I was not inebriated. The fact of the matter was that my Korean is poor and her English was not incredible, so we both were able to switch to German which we both knew reasonably well. If you would've told me that people in Korea spoke German before I came here, I would've laughed at you. Oh, but they do...on a huge ego boosting note, the German prof said my German was excellent, except for my slight American accent (which...well...one would expect, no?). Huge ego boost there, especially considering I haven't taken the language courses in years and have only refreshed by watching American movies and TV shows dubbed in German.

Anyways, the rain continued to pour and it appeared as though everyone had vanished for the evening. Not really wanting to go out (being tired and sick of rain), I took my room key from Jim (who was comforting his girlfriend who was sick) and chilled out in my room watching American media in Korean. The cartoons weren't so bad (Courage the Cowardly Dog was alright, but I couldn't stand the voices for Fairly Oddparents) but I couldn't stand the movies. Having already watched Transformers once, I can't watch it again. The movie that was on after it was Taken (which is basically 90 minutes of Liam Neeson beating the crap out of people and taking numbers). While I enjoy Taken, I didn't have the energy for it and conked out.

I awoke some time later to Jim coming in the room, us exchanging pleasantries (his girlfriend, Nancy was doing alright though she was still sick) and me taking the floor (I don't like hotel beds- though it was but a mattress) and Jim taking the bed. We switched out the lights at around 12:30ish. And then Taylor and his ladies came back. Ho boy.

The noises blasted from his side of the room (he was in the room right next to ours) and his very distinct voice could be heard over the four or so other people. This wouldn't be bad if it was only for a few minutes. Unfortunately a 'few minutes' lasted until three or so in the morning.

Now, I'm a passive person by nature and don't like to be confrontational, but there was no one happier than me when Jim stood up, walked out of our room yelled at Taylor to "shut the ****" up and slammed Taylor's door. Yes, the door to the room had been open the whole time. The room, predictably, quieted down.


I awoke around 7 to the sound of roosters outside. Yes, roosters. The motel had roosters. Looking on the bright side, I had to be up by 8 or so anyhow, I took a quick shower and staggered downstairs.

From there, our somewhat zombifyed group (apparently, Jim and I weren't the only ones kept up by Taylor and his gang) groaned our way onto the bus to a trip to an aboretum. When the somewhat grumpy bus diplomatically stated that Taylor had been a mite too loud the night before, he said, with much confusion in his voice "I was?" The bus sighed.

Anyways, the arboretum was nice and it was good to walk around. The atmosphere was fantastic, especially getting out of the polluted air of Seoul. It was just nice to breathe and see plants one wouldn't normally see. Pictures will be up with the mud festival ones as well at some point this week.

Now for lunch, the tour guide said we'd be going to a buffet. Nice, we thought. That's something up our alley. Korean buffet. However, we did not realize that the buffet was not prepared for our arrival. There was a mixture of joy and fear in the eyes of the proprietors of the buffet restaurant as not one, but three tour buses pulled up.

The food was decent but we were just happy to eat. A three hour bus ride back and I'm ready just to work on projects for my classes or write.

Long story short- eventful weekend. Enjoyable? Yeah, parts of it. But, would I do it again? Not with the same weather.

Reven