I've decided to punish all of you with a slide show :-)

It's been forever, there's really no point in apologizing for it. . .but I made a slide show of. . .basically everything that has happened since the last blog.

The slide show covers Anriette's birthday, my green belt, our purple and blue belt tests, Cheusok, dinner parties, and tons of other things.

The updates, in short, are that the past several months have been really amazing.  Albert is going home soon (NOOOOOO!)  Rob is also leaving :-( but Lindie is moving back to Mugeo, so that will be pretty awesome.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and I'm going home for Christmas in exactly a month!

Of course, there's a lot more than that. . .but that is the VERY short story.

Here are some great pics of some really awesome times in Korea :-)

The songs are Starlight, by Muse, Don't Stop Believin', by Journey (both of which we make habits of singing almost every time we go to a singing room. . .which is up to about 436 times at this point) and Russian Unicorn by Bad Lip Reading, which isn't exactly a song but is still awesome.

Sorry guys.

Summer Vacation Pt 2: Day 2-3 Yeosu 여수

Sunday-Monday


We got up (completely not) early in our little hotel in Jeonju and took a taxi to the train station.  We were thinking about spending a little more time there in the old village because we really didn't see as much as we wanted to, but we decided to go ahead and get to the next place, which, thankfully, we could get to by train (the only way to travel.)

The taxi gave us our last little tour of the city (including the hidden and expansive hotel district) and we went in to buy our tickets.

We were still just a little sleepy on the train ride to Yeosu.  I think it took about an hour or so to get there, more or less, but we napped on and off in the sunshine.  Yeosu is connected to the rest of the peninsula of Korea by a little strip of land, but is otherwise an island (not really, but it feels like it) and it has a lot of little islands off of it's coast.  We weren't completely sure what we wanted to do here, but Albert and Anriette had a basic plan.

We got off of the train and immediately started looking lost (the best way to get around) found a map or two after a while and realized instantly that we needed some food, and fast.

There were four basic stages of existence for us while we were on vacation:  very hungry, very tired, very hot, or waiting for a bus/taxi/train/etc.  All of these life stages were, of course, very happy stages, but also with the other things factored in.  This particular stage was very hungry, so we walked over the bus stop to grab some sort of bus.

I'm not really sure why we chose this approach, more than once, to get around.  I'm sure we will use it again, because, more often than not, we have good luck, but this was not really one of those times.  We had this innate sense that we should be going in the opposite direction of where the bus chose to go and very soon (after passing precious little interesting or usable things in town) the bus pulled into it's end-of-the-line depot and we were just farther down the mountain than we intended to be.  So, we started walking back up to where we came from and decided that maybe a taxi would be a better plan.

Yeosu is where they are planning on having the 2012 World Expo, so there were plenty of promotional signs and everything for that (I wonder if we'll still be there then. . .?)  They are working on completely transforming the city and it looks like it's really going to be something by the time it gets started.

We finally found a cab and asked him to take us to the police station because that was near something that we wanted to see and we thought maybe there would be some restaurants there.  Of course he was a little puzzled by this and eventually we just showed him the map and he took us to the actual site we wanted to see.

We got out of the cab (it was a mission to find one, let me tell you!) at the site of the biggest one story wooden building in Korea, looked at it for a second and then realized that if we didn't eat something really soon we were going to eat each other, or perhaps the cab driver, so we decided to come back after feeding.

We found a place that looked a lot like the old downtown part of Ulsan which was very encouraging because the old downtown in Ulsan has basically nothing but stationary stores, clothing shops and restaurants.  We walked and walked and walked and walked and found not a one, not a single one!  We were really starting to look rather delicious to each other and each of us were trying to figure out the pros and cons of choosing who to devour when around the corner, completely hidden away, but still shining like an angel of fried goodness stood a Lotteria (which is kind of like McDonald's.)  So we rushed inside, ordered some food, and ate it with gusto.

After eating we started looking around for some Tylenol.  There are two serious problems about having a headache in Korea.  The first one is that, back home you can buy about a million extra strength Tylenol (or excedrine, or aspirin, or ibuprofen, or blah blah blah) for a couple of bucks from anywhere that sells anything at all.  In Korea, you must ask for it at a pharmacy, it's still a couple of bucks but you can only get Tylenol and you can only get ten.  The second problem is that back home, like I said, you can get it from anywhere that sells anything at any time.  In Korea, pharmacies are not open on the weekend (at least, they weren't for a long time) and are CERTAINLY never open on Sundays.  But we had headaches and we had them bad.  And would you believe it, we found a pharmacy and it really looked like it was open, so we ran across the street to see and it was!  So we each bought a box for the road had a little celebration.

We went back to the biggest wooden one-story building in Korea and looked around for a while.  It was pretty cool.  It had a beautiful view of the ocean.

But there's more pictures of that in the slideshow :-)  We tried to find a way to get to the bridge that you see in the background, because there were some other things over there that we wanted to see.  There was randomly a LOT of traffic on the bridge, so cabs didn't want to go there, but we found one to take us pretty close and then we just got out and walked across the bridge.  It was a little gloomy outside, but that was alright because it kept us from getting too, too hot, and we were, remember, carrying everything in the world with us at the time.

While we were on the bridge, Anriette and I looked down into the water while Albert was taking pictures.  We saw a little fishing boat coming our way getting ready to go under the bridge.  He was a long way down but we could see a man hanging out of the door, so I waved to him just for fun, not thinking he would see me.  But he did and he waved back, so we laughed and waved some more.  Then he put both arms over his head and touched the top of his head to make a heart with his arms, a pretty common gesture over here, but funny every time, so we laughed a lot and then went on our way.

On the other end of the bridge they had a harbor, and in the harbor they had a lot of little tour and mini cruise ships.  Among these boats were a couple of replica old turtle war ships that were pretty cool, so instead of just waiting for some bus to show up and take us somewhere, we ran down to explore the boats a  little more closely.

Turned out, this was one you could actually tour, so we paid our dollar and we got on the boat.  It was set up with a bunch of creepy mannequins.  The top deck was set up like they were in the middle of battle.  In the bottom deck they were in the process of eating, sleeping, playing games, making food, and dying (randomly enough.)  We were there for a while and eventually got a little too creeped out and went back to the fresh air.

There was a little island nearby that Albert wanted to go to that had a lovely little beach for camping.  We eventually made it there after walking around a lot, getting on and off of different buses, and finally got to the little island with the little beach and it was really lovely.  :-)

There were tents set up all over so we decided that it would be a good night for camping-we were carrying around the tent and poles and everything. We picked a spot, bought a couple of mats to put on the roots and rocks and everything, and set up our tent.  It was a neat place, it had a really cool vibe, people camping and singing and cooking and playing soccer, shooting off fireworks etc.  The strangest thing happened, we got hungry AGAIN!  There were a couple of restaurants in this little part of the island, and we went to all of them but all of them either didn't really sell food as much as they sold the materials for you to make it yourself, or they were out of everything except what would make our hair catch on fire.  We walked around for a while, wondering how fantastic it was to be able to walk around and feel completely safe, even though we were so out of our element.  On the other side of a rather huge tent village there was a little diner in the middle of a field (reminded me of something you would see in like a 1920's town in a town a highway bi-passed, one of those "Last Chance" diners. . .so obviously, I was very curious about it.)  We had tried everywhere else so we settled on this place finally, chose something off of the menu and sat on the plastic lawn furniture outside and waited to see what we were going to get.

Here's a video!

It was fried chicken.  Awesome  :-)

We went down to the water for a little bit, then walked around some more and finally went to bed.  The ground was really, really bad, and Albert and I didn't sleep the whole night.  Anriette is a wonder, man, she can sleep like a little kid after a field day no matter where she is.  So, Albert and I are getting cranky and then, suddenly, it starts to rain.  So, we grab our shoes and everything and put them inside the already pretty cramped tent, and got even more cranky.  Then it started to leak and flood.  So, we got up and ran off to the bathroom.  It was around 5am, so it was time to get ready to leave anyway, right?  We changed clothes, packed up all of our now wet stuff and went off to the one bus stop on the whole mountain.

And we sat there.  And sat there.  And sat there.  It was raining and we were a little cranky and we waited and waited.

Maybe 45 minutes later or something there was still no bus but miraculously a taxi showed up!  So, we literally jumped in front of it, threw all our stuff it, and headed back off to the main land to find a motel or somewhere to let all of our stuff dry.

I made my friends ask the cab driver to take us to Lotte Mart before falling asleep in the back seat because I'm really stupid sometimes and on this particular occasion I had forgotten to take all of the movies off of my camera memory card so after about 20 or so pictures my first day it was full.  On my camera  I can't access the movies to delete them, so I needed a new memory card.  I looked everywhere for one, but I knew that they would have one at LotteMart and we had seen one the day before so we headed there.  LotteMart is like Walmart, except for one very important difference: it's not 24 hours.  It opens at 10 or something obscene like that, and it was still VERY early.  So, we got out of the cab into the pouring rain (with no umbrellas, because we are really smart like that) and marched down the sidewalk in search of a.) a hotel b.) a convenience store or c.) something to eat.

We walked up the street from LotteMart, our already wet stuff getting even wetter, and after a little while found the massive hotel district of this part of the island.  Awesome.  So, we sloshed into the lobby of the first hotel to try to find a room.
Last time I talked about the first kind of common hotel/motel where it belongs to someone who basically just lives there behind the counter and you just wake them up in order to get or give your key.  There's another kind of very common hotel, we learned that morning, the hotel that is literally abandoned in the morning/early afternoon, where you just leave your key in the window and there isn't a soul ANYWHERE to be found, no matter how many times you ring the bell.  I don't know exactly how many hotels we went to before we found some signs of life but I know it was at least five or six.  We also stopped at a convenience store to get some umbrellas and snacks.  Finally we found one, and they thought we were really crazy asking for a hotel at 8am but they didn't know the night that we had.  It was a nice room, too, VIP room, very clean, big, and dry and even had a computer with internet access.  So, we took showers, laid out or hung up all of our wet stuff and fell asleep for a few hours.

It was still raining when we woke up but I still dragged my friends back to Lotte Mart (which was within rainy walking distance) to get a memory card and some lunch.  Lotte Mart always has a big food court, so we knew we could find something that would appeal to us.  So, off we went.
LotteMart always, also, has a pharmacy (always, except for this one and poor Anriette was coming down with a cold) and as we looked everywhere for it we found something a little random:

Just a random bird sitting outside of a little shop inside of LotteMart. ..

We found a memory card, we found hats and little bags, and everything that we needed, so it was time to eat.  And eat we did.

Chinese food, Korean style.

So, reloaded up with supplies, we went back to the hotel to figure out what to do (thanks to Mr. Complimentary Internet!) and had high hopes for the rest of the rainy Monday.

Here's a video:

Even with all of our high hopes, and all of the interesting things to see there is Yeosu, we had a REALLY difficult time getting motivated thanks to the rain and the lack of sleep, and of course the movie channel and extra blankets.  We watched a popular Korean comedy/variety show for a while trying to figure out what we should do and ended up trying to figure out what we should do until it was time to go find some dinner.  It's amazing how many times in a day one can get hungry!

Anriette living it up in Yeosu.

It was still raining, but it was dark now.  We set out through the hotel district to find something that looked rather familiar.  One important fact to know about Yeosu is that there were no foreigners there, probably there hadn't been any foreigners there for years and years, because the looks that we got whenever we stepped foot anywhere wasn't just the normal "hey, look at those strange looking people!" they were more like "what in the name of all that is sacred are those things?"  which, to be honest, gets to you after a little while.  We walked around for a while looking for a sam geb sal place (slices of pork that you grill yourself) and we found a friendly looking one, we just had no idea how friendly they would be. . .

When we walked in they immediately gave us towels to dry off with and seated us, apologizing for not being able to speak English.  We ordered some food.

It was a husband and wife team that owned the restaurant and they were both as cute as could be.  They brought us a lot of free stuff and, even though we ordered it, he was positive that we didn't know how to cook or eat it so he did everything for us including putting it into our mouths.  :-)  Very cute couple.

After we finished eating they invited us to come back a couple of hours later to stay at their house for the night.  We told them we already had a hotel but they still invited us.  We decided to think about it and ended up going to a nori bang instead.

Funny story about the nori bang.  Of course, they had no idea that we go to one of these like every twenty minutes, but the first one we went into we asked them (in Korean) for a room to sing in and she just flat out said "no."  There wasn't a person in the place but she did not feel like having three crazy foreigners in her singing rooms, apparently.  Very unexpected.  So, we walked up the street a little more and found another one.  We walked in and asked again.  She looked at us like we actually had tentacles coming out of our ears and neon pink skin.  She asked us if we wanted a room, so we said yes, and she stared at us as if any minute we might explode.  She led us to a room and gave us an introduction to the ins and outs of the singing room, we told her we knew how to do it, but it was sweet of her to help us out.  She still stood by the door for a while until she heard the singing start then came in later to give us some water and check to make sure we knew how to do everything.

Fun.

Here's a video that showcases two very important things: Albert's singing ability and Anriette's creative mockery.  Oh, also that we spend too much time in places like this.  :-)

She made up an interpretive dance for the entire song.  Fantastic.  My friends are so wonderfully strange.

After staying in the singing room for a couple of hours we went back to the hotel to get some sleep hoping that we could get a semi-early start on the next day in Namhae.


Okay, and I am going to cheat a little bit and start on the 4th day because it just makes sense to do that, or something.  The next morning we got up and we got a taxi to take us to the ferry terminal.  We were all so geekishly excited to take a ferry (especially since it meant we didn't have to take a bus!) and we got to the terminal, bought our tickets, and walked around that part of town for a while until our ferry was scheduled to leave.

Still, remember, there are no foreigners there, nor have there been for a while.  This is the place that is going to have the 2012 World Expo, apparently, so they are going to get their fill of foreigners soon enough, but as it was then, we were more than an oddity.  If we sat down or stood in one place long enough we would draw a crowd.  Sometimes people would try to talk to us, but mostly they would just stand in front of us and stare. . .like we couldn't see them or something. . .Anyway, whenever anyone tried to talk to us it was mostly old men and they talked mostly to Anriette and I asking things like "How old are you?" or "Are you married" to which we came up with various responses with Albert and I being married and Anriette was our daughter, and then vice versa, and then we would just leave the area.  It was pretty around there, as we walked, and it was finally not raining!

Anriette and I taking a picture.

Albert taking a picture of Anriette and I taking a picture.

Picture of Albert after taking a picture of us taking a picture. :-)

Then we got on the ferry, chose our seats, and got ready for our journey across the sea.  And here's Anriette to tell you all about it.

We landed safely in Namhae after about 30 or 40 minutes, but that's a story for another day.  In the meantime, here's the slide show with all the silly pictures of our adventures in Yeosu:



Yeosu:  Hot Summer by f(x) and Sorry Sorry by Super Junior (best song ever ^^)

THANK YOU FOR READING!!!  :-)

Summer Vacation Pt 1 of. . .4? Jeonju 전주

I know, I know, I know I tell you lies.  It's been more than a week since I blogged last.  It's been more than a week since summer vacation. . .a couple of weeks, actually I guess.  BUT  I have a really good reason or two!

The first reason is that we were gone for five whole days.
The second reason is that there were three of us each with a camera going 24 hours a day.
The third reason is that we came home with more than 1,500 photos and videos.
Awesome.  But a lot to go through and organize.

So, I thought this time, instead of just uploading a thousand or so of the best ones, I would make slide shows, that way I could show you all the scenery, the good stuff, and the silly stuff without making you scroll through pages and pages of. . .screen?

In addition to showing you more photos and videos than ever before (aren't you excited!?) the slide shows will be accompanied by the very best of the K-Pop summer charts (some of which we know well enough to sing in nori-bangs, and by some I mean the choruses of one. . .and the English.) 


So, let's get started, shall we?

This was the idea (we spent weeks on these ideas. . .) we were going to ride trains for our summer vacation and see what we could find.  See, what happened was, we're supposed to have five week days off for summer vacation and five week days off for winter vacation.  We didn't get our five days off in winter, so it should not have been a shock when they jipped us on our summer vacation as well.  We did get it extended to three days from only two, but only Anriette, Albert and I had the same days off (which was good that we had them off, but left out Rob and Lindie, unfortunately.)
So, to make the best of our shortened vacation we thought a proper gyspy journey would be awesome.
There was only one rule in the weeks leading up to our departure: no plans.
BUT, it's a little hard to really do that, honestly, so Albert and Anriette came up with a basic framwork plan (which was awesome) and we were going to go to the west coast and see what was there, hitting five destinations in five days.  We bought giant maps and sat dreaming about what we would find.

Then, the big day arrived.  The Friday night before we were set to leave was not only a seasonal work dinner for all of us but it was also Mac's going away party, so we were all out pretty late that night.  But we made a plan to leave early, so that's what we did.  To the bus terminal first thing to catch the 9 o'clock bus to Jeonju, home, we heard, of a very old fashioned village and famous bi bim bap.

And that's what we did.  We met each other at 8:30, really only a few hours after we went to bed, beady eyed and yawning and grabbed a bus that took us to the bus terminal.  We stood in line looking a little confused, like foreigners do, a Hot Six (like Red Bull. . .) in each hand.  But all the 9 o'clock tickets were sold out and the next bus wasn't leaving until 11:30 SO we called the whole thing off and went back to bed.
No.
We went outside and bummed around Samsan for an hour and half waiting for our bus to get ready.
Then, finally, we were off.

Here's the show!    Go Away-2NE1

SATURDAY: JEONJU

We arrived in Jeonju about four hours later and walked squinting out into the sun and into a taxi.   Our first stop was a very old church that Albert found on the internet.  So, we went there and took pictures.  Here's Anriette to tell you all about it!

We got to the castle and started looking around.  It was probably a million degrees (half a million degrees C.) but it was really beautiful, the whole city.  It was very old fashioned and had a very relaxed and family feel to it.  We entered the gate to the castle and started instantly snapping photos.  Here's Albert to tell you more!

After we walked around the church grounds a little bit we decided that we needed to feed.  There was a service going on inside the church at the time so we couldn't go in and take pictures, so we walked across the street to get some of the famous bi bim bap that everyone told us we had to try.

Bi Bim Bap is a bowl of. . .stuff.  Really.  Everytime your order it, it's different.  But it's always rice with bean sprouts, sometimes little fish, or mushroom slices (I think. . .) or different veggies, some hot sauce (or not) basically any kind of thing can end up in bi bim bap, then you mix it all together and sometimes it's awesome and sometimes it's not.  We ordered traditional Jeonju bi bim bap and also a raw beef version (never thought I would be ordering this stuff, but it's actually not bad, if you just think that you're eating really, really, really rare steak. . .) And it was pretty tasty.  Like the kimchi, however, bi bim bap, at least to me, was a lot spicier than back home in Ulsan.  But that's one of the cool things about Korea, every province has their own versions and recepies for things, from kimchi and bi bim bap to soju and Makkoli. . .but more on that later.

After finishing our lunch we walked back across the street to take pictures of the inside of the church.  It was really beautiful, everything was.  Then we walked to the rotary, which was also supposed to have something cool, according to the internet, and it has, I think, the enterance to a gate from long, long ago.  It was also very cool.  Then we walked through a huge market place and looked at all the hanbok and random live fish/eels/things in shells, and silk worm larvae they had to sell.

This is the part where I should tell you that even though we tried, we really, really, really tried to pack as lightly as possible, we still all ended up with huge, heavy backpacks, and we also had a tent with poles in tow, and it was very hot, like I think I mentioned, so we decided we needed to find a hotel and unload some of our stuff before we headed out to see the main parts of the village.  And that's exactly what we did.

A little about hotels in Korea for a moment, if you don't mind.

There are really lovely, enormous, very-much-like-back-home hotels all over Korea, of course, but like their Western counterparts, they are outrageously expensive for three road weary and (let's be honest) not terribly picky travelers.  Larger towns in Korea are also usually absolutely infested by colorful/neon/overly ornate or needlessly over-decorated "Love Motels" or "World Inns" depending on who you ask (they changed the name to World Inns, apparently, when the Olympics were here last. . .but we all know the truth.)  The really amazing thing about these inns is that they cost about $30 a night.  But UNLIKE $30 hotels back home, these are actually usually very clean and bright and perfectly safe, so they are perfect for dropping off stuff and catching a few hours of sleep in the middle of long days of adventuring.  It's good that they're here, they're a constant that you can depend on in every single little town, so accommodations are literally the last thing we ever think about when we make a trip.  In many towns we've been to, there's like a motel district, just a part of the town there is a whole empire of only hotels and convenience stores, so it's always easy to find a free room at a good price.

Now, I tell you all this to say that Jeonju is a big city.  But, as we walked around we noticed the very strange lack of motels.  Across the bridge we saw one, only one, so we walked to it.  This one was of the variety where the woman who owns the place also lives there, so we walked in, got a room, dropped off our stuff and then went exploring again.  (I think we were the only people there the whole time, but I'm not sure.)

Near the hotel there was a covered-deck like thing, that are pretty common finds in cities in Korea, and people just take off their shoes and hang out on them, but this one was huge, and was apparently built way back when, over the river, at the spot where two parts of the river met and swirled, which really fascinated the leader at the time.  The river doesn't swirl here these days, that we could see, but we still stared at it for a while.  :-)

The town was beyond charming.  Everything was perfectly manicured, there were cobble stone streets everywhere and little streams built along the sidewalks which were filled with small children.  We stopped at a small shop that had a lot of really nice knick knack souvenirs along with several varieties of fans (for which Jeonju is famous) so we all bought a couple of things and kept walking.

It was a beautiful day, and without all of our gear, we were ready for anything.  But first, we needed some ice cream.  We took pictures, noticed that an outdoor concert was going to start in a while, bought some ice cream, and ate it in a BEAUTIFUL gazebo right next to the beautiful stream and tree lined cobble stone street.

We walked around for a while longer, and then the concert started, it was a traditional dress, traditional instrument concert and we listened for a while and we are all incredibly surprised when they started playing the Mission Impossible theme song. . .here's a vid!

We walked around for a while longer, taking in the sites and then decided to head back to the hotel, or at least to head that way.  Out of no where we were suddenly nabbed right off the street by a wild-eyed restaurant owner who led us over to a table outside of his place proclaiming that it was free Makkoli for foreigners night!  So, what choice did we have?  He was quite insistent.  There were a couple of tables with huge bowls for Makkoli in the middle and smaller drinking bowls all around in front of a collection of Koreans and slightly confused looking foreigners.  So, we started drinking and talking and making friends.  We learned several things that night, one of them being how they make Makkoli and (perhaps their more famous liquor) soju.  Makkoli is a rice wine that is made by mixing rice and yeast and some other things in a jar for about 10 years.  The mixture separates into a clear liquid on top that becomes Saki and the thicker mixture at the bottom becomes the rice wine, Makkoli.  There are variations of the Makkoli, soju, and kimchi (and maybe Bi Bim Bap) recipes from province to province in Korea.  Jeonju is supposed to be famous for it's Makkoli and Bi Bim Bap. . .and we tried both.  The Bi Bim Bap was nice but we all agreed that we liked Ulsan's version of Makkoli better. . .Jeonju's Makkoli tasted a little yeasty to us, but hey, it was free, and we made some new friends so that was cool.  He wouldn't let us leave for a long time, I want to say that we were there for at least three hours, but finally we managed to get away and go look for some food or at least pretend like it was time to go to bed.

We walked around a little more on the way back to the hotel, then Albert went to sleep, but Anriette and I were restless and walked around a little more.

What's fascinating about Korea, something that continues to fascinate us, is how amazingly safe it is.  We are always able to totally enjoy ourselves everywhere we go because it is so amazingly safe.  But before it got too late we went back to the hotel to enjoy some fantastic late night Korean programming.

The plan for the next day was a little place called Yeosu, so after we wound down enough to actually get some sleep, we were ready for the next stage of our adventure. . .which is coming soon.  I promise!!  :-)


And here's a slideshow!!   SHOCK!  By BEAST 

MudFest July 16-17

   Summer in Korea is awesome and terrible at the same time and for many different reasons.  The terrible part is mostly the scorching heat, the torrential rains, and the legions of mosquitoes, but the awesome parts make up for all the crazy discomforts of the season.  The biggest benefit to summer in Korea is festivals, festivals, and more festivals.  It seems like, even in our part of the country, they have a summer festival for everything, sand, sun, film, music, every kind of flower, every kind of thing.  So, last weekend we ventured with our wonderful language cafe to a city close to Seoul on the coast called Boryeon at a place called Dae Cheon Beach.

A little bit about the festival now.  The mud in Boryeon is said to be great for the skin and is used in manufacturing cosmetics. The first mud festival took place in 1998 in an attempt to draw attention to the new products but is now, apparently, one of Asia's most famous festivals attracting around 2.2 million visitors every year and the most foreigners. . .like us!  :-)

The mud itself is gray, just totally gray.  They also had colored mud for body painting. . .I'm not sure where that was, but we had fun in the gray, mercury-looking mud.

But, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Saturday morning- -Anriette dragged me to the taekwondo gym for the open house at, like, 10 in the morning (Saturday morning!! :-)  And it was about 6 million degrees outside, seriously, so we stayed there for a little while not really doing anything, just sort of sitting there, looking really terrible because we were in our mud clothes and he was in a suit.  We were there until about 11:30, then we went off to meet our crew at the language cafe.

It's important to point out, even though it really ended up not being a huge problem, that there were 14 of us and we had one vehicle to take there: a 12 passenger van.  There were seven Korean, four Russians, two South Africans, one American, bags, food, and a partridge in a pear tree in that van.  We were literally traveling across the country to get to the festival so it took about 6 hours.  Needless to say, we were a little cozy all packed in there together, but that's what memories are made of, right?  :-)

Right.

MudFest!

Poor little sardines.  This is the back.  We were in the row in front of this, for a while. . .

The front two rows.  There should be two more heads in the photo, but they were outside of the car at the time.

Our van :-)

We set off.  We went for a couple of hours and then stopped to stretch our legs, run to the restroom, grab some sodas, and then get back on the road.  Maybe two hours later, we stopped again for the same thing.  Then we got to a toll booth where one of the girls announced that she left her cell phone on the sink at the last rest stop and we had to go back and get it.  We looked for it (a little hard to do, obviously, since we weren't terribly mobile) called it, everything.  It was apparently on vibrate (and I think the music was on?  Anyway) so we turned around to head the half hour back to the last rest stop.  She got out and ran to the bathroom to find it.  Anriette was clever enough to notice a cell phone sitting on the seat right where the girl's rear end used to be. . .
Then we left again, the same half hour back to the toll booth.

We stopped again at Home Plus (like Walmart) to get some dinner for the beach, then added that food to the human and luggage pile in the van.  :-)

We finally got to the beach and it was lovely.  There were camp sites all over, but they were a little crowded, and besides, why sleep in a camp site when you can sleep right on the beach!?  We'd done it before and it worked out quite well.  So, we arrived about 730ish and started setting up for dinner.

Here's the ground we covered:

We spanned the country!  :-)

We bought some pork, chicken, bread and cheese (because foreigners HAVE to have cheese. . .and bread. . .in order to make pork and cheese sandwiches.  It's just science.)

Jonah brought a couple of grill/gas burners, so everyone got started.

Our own little piece of beach.

A realistic view of the beach, from Albert's camera.

An HD version of the beach, from Albert's camera :-)

Getting ready for dinner.

 Dinner was lovely.  We all sat around and talked for a little while, then we went off exploring a bit, then grabbed a couple of people and went to a singing room for a bit, then came back and hung out again, then Annie and I left to go exploring after half of the group left to do something else and the other half was getting ready for bed.

Anriette and I found a few very interesting things.  Right up the beach from where we were was where the sort of preview part of the mud festival was and there was a big sort of cobblestone square.  We walked up to a really cool street break dancing show and watched that for a while.  They did a couple of American songs, and a couple of Korean songs that we know by now, and it was a really fun show.  Then, sadly, it ended, and we had to look for something else to do.  We decided the best plan of action was to sit down in the middle of the street (which was only for pedestrians at this point) and play Rock, Scissor, Paper.

Let me just explain a little about this.

Rock, Scissor, Paper is the definitive decision-making process tool in Korea.  The students use it to choose everything.  And it's different than it is back home.  Thirteen kids can, in one minute, decide who goes from 1 to 13 with no dispute, no arguing, and while we stand there, as their teachers, completely dumbfounded to how they did all that so quickly.  But it's not just for students, no-I've seen plenty of real live grownups use this as well.  So, of course, we've adopted it.  There's a two handed version where you throw a different signal with each hand and say "Ki Bi, Bo!" (rock, scissor, paper. . .not actually, but you say it quickly so it sounds like this) and have both of your hands out, then you say "Hana peg gi!" which means, take away one.  The loser has to surrender the inside of their forearm for a two fingered slap from the winner.  We played this in the car for about. . .well,  long enough for Albert and I to have bruises and Anriette to have long, purple streaks up and down both arms.

So, there we were, sitting on the bricks in the middle of the street, facing each other, throwing out hand signals and taking our turns to be smacked.  This had a very unexpected result.  I think we had only been doing it about seven or eight minutes when the first group of Korean strangers sat down on the street to join us.  We collected four or five different groups of people while we sat there.  They would all stay fifteen or twenty minutes and then go off and do something else, we would resume our game, and a few minutes later more people would come to join.  So strange.

Albert joined us while the first group was with us and we just chatted and played.  More often than not, no one in the joining group spoke any English, but we would still hang out together for twenty minutes or so, just playing games.  Pretty cool, actually.

We hung out for a while longer and with tomorrow's rising sun baking us in our tents looming in our minds, we decided it was time to get a little sleep.

We put up our tent on a dock that sold big inner tubes on the beach.  Not sure why we decided that was a great idea, but we weren't the only ones camping there.  It was a little. . .docky.   But the tide came in fast and furiously and every inch of beach was under the water.  The waves were so wild that our tent was splashed pretty hard a couple of times.   But even suspended over the raging sea, we got a little sleep.

Then at about 7 the next morning, the owner of the dock/inner tube platform came to wake us up.  I'm sure it was a lot of "what are you doing here?  Get off of my dock!" or something, or at least that's how it sounded to us but we tried as hard as we could to sleep through it, until we realized where we were.  So, we moved into the grass and slept a little more.

Anriette and I slept through breakfast but I still had a couple of bagels from the day before, so that wasn't such a big deal.  And at about 10 or so the next morning we were off to the festival, which was within walking distance up the beach from the campsite.

The breakfast we missed.  Pork and freshly caught clams.

What we were doing to miss it.

Our little camp site.

Peace. . .and mud.

Mud and. . .Lady Gaga?

"We're the three best friends that anyone could have!"

 We walked for a while and then we saw it!  People collected and covering themselves with mud.  This was definitely going to be awesome.

There was a gated off section of the festival that had mud pools, mud slides, mud. . .well, you name it.

Outside of the gated part there were stands filled with mud and paintbrushes to, obviously, paint yourself with.  :-)  Awesome.  It took us about fifteen seconds (miles ahead of the rest of our group) to get covered.  :-)

We painted Albert first, obviously.

Then Anriette and I painted each other.  Or at least, our faces.

Then, literally, about 50 people took pictures of us.

This was after our quite gentle attack of Ji Young. 

"Legen- - -

- - -dary!"

There was this guy who didn't want to get muddy but wanted to be in a picture with muddy people. . .he chose us. . .and we made him pay for his cleanliness!

 We bought our tickets, went into the park, and immediately in line for the mud pool.

Waiting to get seriously dirty.  Ji Young on her way in!

The mud felt so awesome, just slick and smooth, and fantastic on the face, eh Anriette?

We took turns splashing/dunking/drowning each other in the mud until we were essentially saturated.

Saturated and happy.

Very, very happy :-)

 Then we were on to the next thing.  Mud prison.  You stood in this little cave and they mercilessly pelted you with buckets of mud until you begged for your life and some people, a fortunate few, were able to escape, like this little guy.

It's hard to get mud out of your eyes when your hands are covered in mud. . .fun fact to know and tell!

The mud obstacle course.

The mud fiends.   Ji Young the gangster in the middle.

 We stood in line for a while to go on the water slide because it looked so incredibly epic.  And it was.

Here's me about to crush Anriette.

You had to climb up the slide first while they sprayed you with hoses, and then you slid  down the completely vertical slide of mud and awesomeness.  Awesome.

Ji Young about to crash into Albert :-)

I think they got haunted a little on the way down. . .

Our braids turned into sculptures. . .pretty cool.

 After we had our fill of being covered in mud, we went to the pool to rinse off.

The beginning of a water fight. . .

Getting all the mud out of our hair was. . .challenging. 

 Then we went to the beach.  It was a glorious day and the water on that side of the country wasn't nearly as impossibly frigid as it is on our side.  So, we spent quite a bit of time in there and had several pretty unmissable chicken fights between Anriette and Ji Young.  I have to say, as tough as Anriette is, I didn't envy her having to fight Ji Young, that girl is a crazy fighter!

Then we had to eat some lunch because we were insanely hungry.  So, some of us went on a drink run and the rest set up another picnic and made pots and pots of Ramen (the food of choice around here to be sure :-)
which we ate with gusto.

We wanted to leave around 2 or 3ish because it was a long way back and everyone was pretty wiped.  Four of the people in our group hadn't been with us since the previous day caught up with us and asked for an extra hour to play around because they couldn't because of something or other, so they set the time, we would leave at 3:30.

But, then, they didn't show up.  3:30 came and went, then 4 came and went as well.  Then we started to call them, but of course no one answered.  Called, called, called then around 4:30 we finally got in touch with them, with the other ten of us standing around the van waiting for them.  They showed up around 4:45 or so without a word, we piled back in the van, started off, and instantly most of us fell into comas.

We stopped for dinner and for a few breaks.  One of the late girls was pretty sure she had left her phone at a rest stop about 45 minutes away from home which almost lead to a lynching but she did find it, so no need for a hanging.

We got home and fell instantly into our beds.  It was about 11:30.  Beautiful, beautiful weekend.  :-)

Thank for reading :-)