A day of new Korean friends

I woke up this morning at my friend Mary's house. We'd had a 'girls night' the night before, which involved wine drinking, girl talk, and music. We had a great time. However, we stayed up too late, and I couldn't sleep at all. I left around 10am. I had to take a 45 minute bus ride back home. I was to meet for lunch in Ulsan (25 minutes away) with my former boss (whom I'm still close with) and his family. I was sitting by myself on the bus. I saw a girl sit across from me. Before I knew it, she was sitting RIGHT next to me and in my face with 20 questions. "What's your name? Where are you from? What are you doing in Korea? How long have you been in Korea? Where do you live? Do you like Korean food?" This is actually quite normal and I'm pretty used to it. However at this point, I would've enjoyed a little nap on the bus. But i sucked it up and chatted away with her. Her english name is Suzie, she's about 20 years old, and an economics major at Pusan National University. We chatted during the whole bus ride and before I knew it, I had a new best friend. As I write this, at 2am (less than 24 hours later) she has managed to call me twice and text me twice. I love meeting new people. Especially Koreans. She was a very very sweet girl. Though I would've still enjoyed my nap lol. I'm embracing the situation and hope to have a new friend along the line.

My boss told me that he had a friend in my area and she would pick me up and bring me over (so nice!). Korea is one of the only places that I would ever trust a random stranger to come up to me, smile and tell me to get in their car without them telling me who they were or what they were doing or where they were taking me :) This has happened about 3 times. First time being when I arrived in Korea at the airport. (I had a random guy come up to me. "Daniel?" "yes?" "come." he put my bags in his car and away we went. he barely spoke english so what could I say? Luckily, it was the right guy and situation :) ) So anyway, this girl picked me up... english name is Grace... and the day began.

Grace and I had lunch with my former boss, Ho, and his wife, and 2 kids, Daniel (english name) and daughter, Hy Mina (korean name)... his son used to be in one of my classes so I knew his english name, however don't know his Korean name...wierd? The daughter is barely 2 years old. She's the cutest thing EVER!! And her Korean name is actually decently easy to remember. I am not a HUGE meat fan. In fact, I only prefer to eat beef... chicken has slowly grown on me the last couple years. In Korea, pork is the MAIN meat so i've been a bit more lenient with that, however when I"m with my boss, they ALWAYS go to a duck restaurant. I've never had duck in my life. However, I've now had it 3 times. It tastes like ham lol. I feel like duck is considered a delicacy so I should feel thankful for it and i know it's not cheap. However I'd take beef or chicken anyday. I still get a guilty conscious. We had a great lunch together and then Grace and I headed back.

In the process of Grace getting lost through Ulsan, she also invited me to her house (walking distance from mine) for iced cocoa. Sounded delicious. Her mother really wanted to meet me. I'll never get used to people who are sooooo excited to meet you jsut because you're a foreigner. lol. So i went to her house and we had great attempted conversation and iced cocoa. Grace is an english teacher at the same chain as my school but at a different location. She teachers grammer (in korean) but she's is very limited in speaking english. With the help of her struggling in english, me struggling in korean, and her dictionary, we managed to talk for hours. Her mother arrived home and asked if I liked kimchi jigae (kimchi soup) and cold noodles (a summer specialty), both of which I'd become pretty accustomed to so i said yes. So she said I was to stay for dinner and she would make it. Apparently she used to own a restaurant so I was excited for some Korean home cooking :) During this conversation about dinner, the mom whipped out a HUGE box of Korean grapes (which yes, are different from grapes at home) and corn on the cob (which is also different...). So we snacked on those. I was told that after my 3rd grape, eating the whole grape and spitting out the seeds, I was told that you're not supposed to eat the skin, and that the seeds were good for your health (like everything else in Korea). So good to know. I spit out the skin and ate the rest of the seeds. hmmm. Then we had corn on the cob. If you never visit Korea, you may never experience this extremely odd corn and the cob sensation. The corn is CHEWY. Not served with butter or salt or anything, just chewy! Very strange lol :) We chatted more, the mom started cooking up a storm, and kept asking if I was ok. Koreans don't sweat very much and I was sweating up a storm so they were really worried lol. They kept adjusting the fan on me to make sure I was cooling off lol. Awkward! When the mom went to get more food. She came back with Grace's cousin and his wife. They had a new 2 month old baby. Babies are cute in general, but this baby was pretty ugly lol. I still had fun playing with him. I wasn't sure at first if the 'wife' was the sister, or friend...she looked sooooo young!! I found out that she was about 20 or 21... still young, she looked younger than THAT! The mom showed me how to make cold noodles (one of my favorite summer dishes), and made Doenjang Jigae (soybean paste vegetable stew) on the side. Doenjang jigae is actually pretty good. I should've paid more attention how to make that. We all had dinner together on the floor, at the table, traditional Korean style. The mom packed up the doenjang jigae for me to take home. During dinner, something was brought up about shoe size. I told them that I have small feet. Size 225 (or 5 1/2 for the Western folk). Apparently Grace's mom has the same size feet and had accidently bought the same shoes twice so she gave me the 2nd pair as a gift. They were a pair of heels that had a purple and green band. Really beautiful actually!! (i was surprised since usually older and younger people have different styles). I wound up leaving Grace's house with A LOT of grapes, 3 stalks of corn, and a huge container of jigae, and a pair of heels :)

I felt like I had an amazing day of culture and diversity, and meeting new people. This is one of the things that I love about living in Korea. You never know what your day is going to be like (at least on weekends), you never know who you're going to meet, how they'll treat you, and you learn something new everyday about a completely different culture. I love it. :)

At least I had a good day. The night wound up sucking pretty bad. It's never easy to realize that someone you thought was a good friend is not at all. No matter what city, state, country you're in, some girls will be girls... petty, selfish, and backstabbing :( At least the day was great!

Boryeong, MUD FESTIVAL!!!!!

The #1 Festival of the year came and went and it was amazing. The Boryeong Mud Festival :) Since I decided to come to Korea, this was the one thing I was looking forward to. I'd seen pictures on friends facebooks and I couldn't wait. :)

The City of Boryeong had previously been known for the quality of the mud on the land. I don't know the entire story, but what I've vaguely narrowed it down to is that they turned the mud into Cosmetic mud (which is very good for your skin) and had a 'health fesival.' Over time, it became more and more popular which eventually just turned into an over all mud festival. This festival brings in MILLIONS of dollars into the small, non-touristy city of Boryeong. They have some local mud but also wind up bringing in Mud from other places as well.

As the time got closer, I (along wtih Gill and Lacey of course) signed up to go with a group on a bus. We left at 8am on Saturday. It was a brutal morning. Everyone (besides the rebel kids drinking in the back) tried to sleep for the first few hours. We stopped about every hour for a potty break...sometimes more when the early-drinkers couldn't hold it any longer (which got to be quite annoying after awhile). The bus ride took 6 hours total and we arrived around 2pm. It was pretty brutal. We were sooooo ready to get off the bus and into the mud. We were a little disappointed with the weather which was a little rainy, gray and cloudy but that didn't stop us. We checked into our accomodation (included in the bus fee). We had a smaller room, me, Gill, Lacey, and their friends Ryan and Gavin... there was just enough room for all 5 of us on the floor... literally a small blanket on the floor and a small sheet to cover us (which we found out later didn't cover all 5 of us). I'd never stayed at a motel like this, and soon learned that I would never want to ever again lol. We changed into our 'mud clothes' and headed out! The festival was in a large area right on the beach. We first found a locker (lacey and i in the locker room), and headed out to take on the world. We tried to bring a camera but it was really difficult. No one wanted to risk their camera getting all muddy. So we only have a few pictures but still good enough for you to get the main idea.
The first thing we did was join in the mud wrestling pit. Just a huge blow up pool filled with mud and people just wrestling all over the place. It was sooooo much fun, but we all got our butts kicked pretty bad. I was spitting out mud right and left. It got pretty intense. I've never been mud wrestling but this was definitely the exact definition for it. As soon as you step in, you get thrown into the middle, as soon as you get up, someone is falling over you. If you do make it up, then there will be another guy taking out your feet from under you. It was on grass so it wasn't VERY hard but still rough and there was so much sand on the bottom of the pit that my knees were cut up pretty bad. There were soooo many people in there! I never would've guessed that being in a place surrounded by American military guys or Korean guys that the Korean guys would be the more aggressive and brutual type. They were REALLY rough with us girl. Don't get me wrong, it was still fun but we weren't surprised when someone got hurt. A few hours later, we went back there and they were monitoring how many people were in at one time and how long they stayed in. So I was glad we got in some good wrestling while we could. It was so nice to just let go and get all dirty and mudd :) So much fun!
Later, we went back to our room, showered, changed, and went for dinner. We had BBQ...which was not impressive at all. it was just a random tent set up for the tourists so i'm not sure that quality wasn't on their priority list lol. We managed to snag a few beers and headed to a club. Lacey wound up kissing a fat guy in a speedo. Random? Gross? absolutely lol. But she's crazy like that. She loves pictures and randomness lol. One of the things I like about her. We left that club pretty quickly though (it was pricey). We wound up finding a house party. A group from Daegu were just partying in their guesthouse... the entire guesthouse and front yard area. So we hung out there and met new people, western and korean. It was fun. I have absolutely no idea what time went back...maybe 4am? Ugggh, i swear time in Korea flies by!

Sunday morning we woke up and had to be out of our guesthouse by 11. We loaded our things into the bus. Luckily it was a BEAUTIFUL day :) Bright and sunny. So we stayed for mud festivities until 4pm. Gill and I were the only ones who decided to get muddy. We put on our mud clothes (i was a tad bit hung over) and back into the muddy madness. We hit up a mud station first and painted each other. Remember, this mud is cosmetic so there is actually a specific way to 'wear' it. Paint it on, wear it a bit, rinse and repeat. lol. While
we were getting painted, these two old Koreans came up to us and take over...apparently we were painting each other wrong??? Of course i got the old korean guy and she got the old korean woman. They just painted our legs and arms. It was pretty funny. We were hoping for some more wrestling, but it was still monitored, tame, and boring. We did the obstacle course thingy again... man it really tears up your knees. You're trying to crawl through and it's just all sand Ugggg! The picture at the very top is from the obstacle course. We walked around a bit, stood in line for way too long to get painted with color mud, bu it was too long a wait. We got over it pretty quickly. We went back to the beach, rinsed off in the water, and layed out for a bit. A great last day at the mud festival :)
It wasn't until the next day we realized how SUNBURNT we were!!!

Bell rang for class... more on Mud Fest later :)