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Published: August 23rd 2011
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Boryeong Group Photo
I don't have any of us muddy. I didn't want to mess up my camera. This was our hotel: Pine and Soil. My school didn’t have class for 5 weeks, and I expected that I would have a long, boring summer, but this summer has flown by. I went away a couple of weekends, did summer camps at 2 schools, and took the first half of my TESOL (Teaching English as a Second Language) class.
First, in early July, I went to the Boryeong Mud Festival with a big group of other foreign friends. Boryeong is a beach on the west coast. The Mud Fest has grown to be The Place foreigners go every year to see others from all over the country. This is because the real point of the festival is getting covered in mud, drinking, and going swimming (in no particular order, but if you really wanted an order, I guess it would be drink, mud, drink, water, drink, drink, drink, water, drink, mud). The area tries to market itself as having special mud that is good for your skin (the origin of the mud theme). In fact, there are real mud pits along the beach, but not exactly where the festival was. At the festival, they had huge buckets of mud and paintbrushes so people would just paint
you with mud (for free). There was also a section for $5 of mud wrestling, mud slides etc. The first mud I was covered in got in my eye, which wasn’t exactly pleasant. It also took forever to get the mud back off and also out of our bathing suits. We didn’t have the best weather Saturday, but since you’re in your bathing suit and covered in mud, it really doesn’t matter if it rains a little. It was fun, but I think next year I’d be just as happy to get a group of friends together and rent a place at the beach (without the mud) for way less money.
The next weekend, I went to Busan , a big city on the south-eastern coast, with a friend. Actually, we stayed in Yangsan, about 45 minutes north of Busan, which is where her boyfriend lives. We did some shopping, went to the beach until it rained, and then went to a jimjilbang (my first).
A jimjilbang is a Korean sauna/spa. I don’t know much about them, but I can explain the one we went to. We were given a locker and a key that you wear on
your wrist, and then we got sauna outfits. In a very Korean way, they gave our group matching outfits. They’re really comfy, like pj’s. So we changed into those and went to the co-ed sauna area. It was a dimly lit room with a wooden floor that some Koreans were lying on. Along the room were igloo-shaped huts which were heated to different temperatures. We went in the second-hottest one. You go in and lay on the floor and there are wood blocks for pillows. There’s also a tv in there but it’s quiet. After two hot ones, we went in the ice room. There were kids allowed to wander around just hanging out and playing a game like jacks. Once we had sweated and froze, we moved on to the water/bathing section.
This meant we went back to the locker area and got NAKED. Yep. When I first got there I was a little shocked by the naked women in the locker area, even though I expected it. So we walked our naked selves to the women’s bathing area (glad I was with someone who’s been there before because I believe I could have ended up in the
Yangsan Park
They have a bike trail right along the river. It's really nice. wrong place with no clothes on). There were 2 levels of warm pools, showers, waterfalls for massages, and other areas where you can pay for extra services (like getting a scrub-down by an old Korean lady). There was an area that was exposed to the outside too, which was really nice. After trying out many of the hot tubs, it was time to scrub ourselves. We were given special Korean washcloths that exfoliate your skin. We found a shower room that wasn’t too crowded. The perimeter is lined with vanities with a mirror, a counter, hand-held showerhead, and a small plastic stool for each person. So we got our scrub on and did the regular shower things too. Then we returned to the locker area, got dressed, and primped in yet another vanity-themed area.
I had been a little nervous about going to a jimjilbang, but it was a really good experience. I’d heard that foreign-looking people are stared at (naturally), but I think because I was with 2 other foreigners, it wasn’t too bad. I felt so clean and calm afterwards it was defo worth the whopping $12 I paid.
The weekend after that was the Jisan
Valley Rock Festival. We’d booked tickets months ago, when we didn’t really even know who would be playing. As they released line-ups, I got more excited because Amadou and Mariam, CSS, and the Arctic Monkeys were going to be playing. The potential downfall with it, though, is that we had to camp. I like camping, but not having a car sucks when you’re going camping. Also, since I own a $20 kids tent from a chain store, I didn’t feel confident it would do well in bad weather. The week/weekend before had been really severe flooding in Seoul, an hour from this festival. And the forecast said thunderstorms all three days. Lovely. So before going, I went to a building store and bought a lot of plastic tarp material. It came in handy.
It turned out that it was nice the majority of Friday evening and all day Saturday. Saturday morning around 6am it poured for about 1.5 hours, but my plastic sheets did a pretty good job of keeping out most of the water. It didn’t rain again until Sunday around noon, and from then on it didn’t stop all day long. As far as the gigs go,
Armbands
At the music festival I liked all the music. Most of the music was Korean, with mainly English headlining acts. I wish I had seen more, but I barely got any sleep, and it was hard to get people going in the morning. The worst part was the mud and worrying that my flipflops would break. In fact this is another reason why the mudfest was needless—I got a lot of mud for free at this festival.
As far as work goes, it hasn’t really stopped. I had 4 vacation days in July, which I didn’t really use. I was planning to do a couple of day trips, but it was so darn hot that I lazed around instead. I had to deskwarm 3 days while hardly anyone else was at school. On both sides of my deskwarming I taught summer camp English lessons at my school and at another middle school (not like camp, but more like school). Directly after the second camp, I started my TESOL class.
The Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages class was weekdays plus Saturdays, except 1 holiday weekend that we had off. It was way more intense than I expected, especially because of homework
Camping Area
The festival is at a ski resort so you can see the ski lodge. My tent was of course under a floodlight which was on all night. and planning 3 open classes (which everyone watches). And it really sucked not to go on vacation when most of my friends were posting really cool pictures of their travels. But it was a good experience. For one thing, there turned out to be 20 Korean teachers with us, which was a surprise. However, we got along really well, and I became good friends with some of them. The class was split into 3 sections, and my section went out to eat and bowling. I also met some new foreigners. Also, I got to watch a lot of lessons. The Korean teachers are really experienced and showed some good new techniques. Overall, I had the opportunity to re-evaluate my teaching, perspective, and attitude. It’s now the first week of classes back at my school, and I feel like I have a lot of changes I want to make in a short period of time.
What have I been doing for fun? Well, in my limited time off, I’ve gone to a river for a daytrip, taken 3 salsa lessons (no comment yet), and done some potlucks with friends. I haven’t done any Korean for almost 2 months, so now
that I have a regular schedule again I’m going to get back into it.
I think (hopefully) my next post will be about Korean food. I’ve been taking pictures; I just want to make sure I have enough of them.
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Ma
non-member comment
best blog so far
Korea was such a great decision for you. Your blog just really helps to share all the fun times and the beauty and charm of where you have been. Really enjoyed this blog and can't wait to share it with some of your family who are always asking about you and how everything is going. This answers all their questions!