Boryeong Mud Festival 2012

Miranda rocks the boryeong mudfest :)

A couple weeks ago, on the 14th of July, I took the fabulous opportunity to attend the Boryeong Mud Festival.  I love being dirty.  I'm the kid who came home from art class with charcoal all over her face.  Every day.

History: According to the official site, the Boryeong Mud Festival, or Mudfest, was started in 1998 as a way to publicize the local mud cosmetics and beautiful beach (Daechon).  It grew in popularity over the years with both Koreans and eventually foreigners enjoying themselves with mud games, contests, slides, etc.  It now supposedly attracts over 2 million people during its two week run.

Events/Attractions:

- There is a closed off area with a 5,000 won entry fee (less than 5 dollars) where you can go in and do mud obstacles, big blow up slides, mud pit wrestling, and a mud jail. The lines were pretty awful, but it was fun wandering around covered in mud. 

-Mud fountains (outside the closed off area), where you can grab handfuls of mud and attack friends/passerby.

-Free body painting

- Bands/dancing by the beach

-Daejon beach.  The beach is the backdrop of the festival, and it is lovely.  Many festival goers have fun in the water.  Mud wrestling was happening on the beach as well.

-Food stalls, mud product stalls, souveneir stalls.

-Convenience stores and restaurants.

colorful costumes at the boryeong mudfest

Food:  We had street food at night (skewered chicken) which was delicious.  For brunch we wandered down the street parallel to the beach and ate at an American style brunch.  I had some pretty decent waffles.

How to get there: My friends and I went through a travel club called I.F.X. (Intrepid Foreign Excursions) who took care of transportation, entry ticket, lodging, and t-shirts.  I paid 99,000 won for two days and one night (the two night option was 111,000 won) which is about $86.00.  The trip took over three hours from Geumchon Station (we're an hour north of Seoul).

I forget which ninja turtle I am...

The experience:

I wasn't sure what exactly to expect - I had read a lot of positive accounts, but quite a few negative ones too.  Also, the forecast was for rain which didn't sound like a ton of fun for someone who gets cold really easily. (While we're on this subject, I don't recommend public school hallways during Korean winters).  And although I'm social, I'm not a big partier and wasn't looking for a Spring Break experience.

Ah, but I had a great time.  My friends and I immersed ourselves in green paint (we were the ninja turtles), and had fun diving through a muddy obstacle course.  I didn't bring my nice camera because I knew it would meet an untimely, dirty death, but I managed to get some good photos and footage on my iphone.  Check out my video:




I.F.X.

I.F.X. did a decent job of things - we were picked up from a convenient location, and we got t-shirts that were awesome.  However, our accommodations were way overbooked which meant 12 peopl in one room with very limited amount of blankets/mats.  I.F.X. also didn't have a decent description of what to expect for accommodations.  After two overnight trips, I now know that staying in pensions in Korea means sleeping sandwiched between blankets on the floor with a group of people, but I would have appreciated the knowledge up front.  It was totally fine, but part of letting an organization take care of you is getting all the details taken care of and relayed to you beforehand.  Oh and they juggled the roommate situation and our Geumchon Crew was split into separate rooms.  As one of the more expensive tour groups, they could have done better.

We did have a great location though, and the I.F.X. crew that I bumped into seemed like fun, friendly people.

Muddy Ninjas!

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Peanut Butter and Hangover Soups

You learn a lot about yourself through the food situation in Korea. 

You learn what distance you are willing to travel and what price willing to pay for familiar junk foods like peanut butter, Mac&Cheese, Dr. Pepper.

You learn some weird stuff about your psyche: you start craving foods you never cared about in the States, simply because you can't have them.  Like Toaster Strudels. I never ate them in the States. I want them now. 

You learn that there are different types/qualities of kimchi, and that cake can be eaten with chopsticks.

And more. 

**

School is out for the next month, starting tomorrow.  Which prompted the following conversation between my co-teacher and me.

SH: Principal will buy lunch for teachers on Thursday.  You want to eat?
Me: Yeah, sure.
SH: We must choose.  There are menus...teachers will choose food they want.  I will send in. (I eventually figured out that we were voting between two main food options for lunch.)
Me: OK
SH: First is...do you know lkdsajlkfjd? 
Me: No.
SH: It is like frozen fish soup.
Me: Ah.
SH: Second is...do you know sadkjfhjh?
Me: No.
SH: It is like...(she googles it) hengohver soup.
Me: Hangover soup?
SH: Yes.
Me: (laughing) Do you know what a hangover is?
SH: Yes. (mimes drunken behavior and next day headache.  It's hard to mime a next day headache.)

I didn't need to think to make my choice.  A hangover soup sounded hearty and tasty.  Frozen fish soup sounded...not hearty and not tasty.

Me: I think I will want the hangover soup.
SH: (very surprised) Really?  Do you know what it is?
Me: No...
SH: (googles something).  It is...cloe-ted bludeh?
Me: Clotted blood? 
SH: (nods vigorously)
Me: OK, I vote for number 1, fish soup.
SH: Me too!

Later the votes were tallied and the hangover soup won.

Me: Uh. Is lunch only soup or other things?
SH: Only soup.
Me: No rice or kimchi?
SH: Yes, maybe kimchi.  Maybe rice.
Me: OK. 

**

In other news, I'm getting mixed signals from my school.  Apparently they want me to wear clothing to class, and yet they insist on limited AC use during these sweltering summer days. 

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Fat, Tired, and Beautiful

"You look tired.  Students say you look very tired.  Are you tired?"

I've been getting these questions quite frequently lately, partly because I am tired after working full time for five months without a vacation.  And partly because, at about the three month mark I stopped regularly wearing makeup.  Yes.  I will be the wife who cuts her hair off and gains 50 pounds after the wedding. 

Lake Park picnic...before I was tired:)

Koreans tend to be extremely blunt about appearances.  Actually, this seems to be an Asian thing: two of my besties grew up in Asia (Japan and Thailand) and had many stories about their classmates/people on the street commenting on their appearances.  It's pleasant to take in the compliments (even the weird ones - like when people on the street insisted on a photo of my friend because she "looked like Britney Spears".  Nope. ), but there is a dark side.  Where compliments flow, criticisms flow also.  My gorgeous friend who grew up in Japan happens to be tall and curvy with massive eyes and curly red hair.  None of these features are conducive to blending in, and when she was a child, her classmates used to tease her about her appearance, including trying to measure her forehead with a ruler.

I'll never forget coming home for Christmas after my first semester at college and being told by my Filipino cook that I looked "healthy."  As in, I had gained weight.  Which, in my case, actually did make me look more healthy - but weight gain is not something that Westerners tend to discuss so freely.  I discussed Korean body image in a different post, so I'm not going to get into that here, but let's just say weight is discussed a lot. (Hence my previous post about my plumpy co-teacher). 

Some of my friends here have been chased out of clothing stores by attendants who are zealously guarding their tiny-sized merchandise. Others tell me stories of how their students have been taught to pose in pictures with their hands under their chims to make their faces look smaller.  A fun post on Eat Your Kimchi discusses the "fat and ugly foreigner" problem - a subject that is discussed so much amongst expats here that I forget it might be an interesting post for my international readers. 

The flipside has its perks.  Students and adults will frequently tell you that you are beautiful, have a small face (this is a good thing), and that they envy your youth.  There are also wonderful moments, like when my third graders discovered my arm freckles and pointed in awe, looking at me and then my freckles, then me, then my freckles, silently letting me know
about my disease. They also pet my arm hair and every once in a while re-discover my eye color.  "Teacher! Blue!  Teacher! Blue!"  Perhaps they think my freckles are a sign that I have not evolved enough and therefore have no concept of mirrors.

A Korean woman I recently met, sent me the following text messages all in a row.

"you are so beautiful <3
you are very tall <3
you are nice <3
by the way you look very tired ππ
take a rest <3"

I actually don't think the pi symbol was π - it was probably a Korean character, but pi does make sense for symbolizing tired.

I thought the messages were a cute followup, but wasn't sure if I was supposed to assure her that she, too, was beautiful (she was), but not so tired looking or so tall.  Also, I was a little surprised because for the majority of my life, compliments from near strangers have come from young (and old) men hitting on me.  Not 35-year-old married women.  Perhaps one of the reasons the compliments come on so strongly here is due to the limitations of the user's English vocabulary.  They only memorize how to say "beautiful", not cute, adorable, pretty, hot, gorgeous, etc.  So they are only armed with the strongest of physical compliments.  Instead of being able to say "You look good" or "That color is really cute on you", they have to tell you that you are so very very beautiful.

Maybe that's the key difference - because it's not weird to be complimentary in the States, it's just weird to come on too strongly. 

So: what do you think about compliments?  Are too many insincere?  Is it OK to tell someone they've gained weight or look tired or sick? 

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Plumpy Kittens

Our fifth grade just finished a unit on daily routines.  Some of the key phrases they needed to learn were "What time do you...(get up, go to bed, etc.)" and "I .... (get up...) at (time)".  The songs that accompany the units are pretty hit or miss, but this one was quite catchy and the boys loved dancing to it.  Check out 25 seconds into the first video when I film the character on the screen dancing.  He has amazing skills with his hips.

The second video is the same song in a different 5th grade class.  The main dancer is a kid named Sang Pum who is an adorable little ladies' man who likes to tell me I'm beauty-ful.  

**

I've stopped posting with regularity on here, partly because my schedule is much busier, but mostly because my day-to-day life doesn't feel exciting anymore.  Oh, I'm plenty narcissistic, and my activities are still interesting to me, but I usually don't think of them as blog-worthy.  Which is silly because almost everything that happens to me here would give my readers insight on life as an English teacher in South Korea (which is why I'm writing).  It's easy to forget that the constant bowing, the screaming grocery store dudes, and the kids who stalk my co-teacher are actually not normal everyday life occurences in most places. 

So without further ado, here is the first of a new series I will dub "boring posts" until further notice.**

This morning SH has been moaning about how plumpy she is.  Yes, plumpy.  Our Head Teacher who we privately refer to as "scary teacher" has been pretty nasty to SH in the past for no apparent reason.  She spread rumors about her incompetency and told her that she had a bad voice.  Yes.  A bad voice.  Apparently SH's voice isn't loud enough. 

The latest Scary Teacher incident happened this morning when Scary Teacher spotted SH wearing a slightly shorter skirt than usual.  "You usually wear longer skirts, so I didn't know that you were fat."  Why, why, why would someone say that to anyone – let alone say it to the skinniest employee at our school?

So SH came into our classroom, googled whatever Korean word Scary Teacher had called her, and came up with "plump/chubby" which she garbled into "plumpy."  Which is kind of a fun word.  If you don't have to hear it ten times from your distraught co-teacher.

**

A few days ago I almost stole a kitten.  I have been considering getting a kitten for a few months now, but haven't made the plunge because of my temporary situation here.  It's difficult and potentially traumatizing (for both parties) to travel with animals, and I only have seven months left in Korea.  However, when I walked outside of my school on Wednesday and saw a tiny (8 inch) kitten meowing and wandering among a few of my students, I took it as a direct sign that I was meant to have one.

"Awwww," I exclaimed, kneeling down and cradling her.  She lay quietly in the crook of my arm, her soft gray fur warm against my skin.  I made obnoxious crooning noises that have probably permanently undermined me with the students who witnessed the scene.  A group of kids had quickly formed, gabbing at me in Korean (they're waiting for my sudden switch to Korean fluency in the same way I'm waiting for their sudden English mastery).

"Where's the mom?" I asked.  They stared.  It dawned on me that I was a complete failure of an English teacher if my 5th grade students didn't understand the word "mom" - which is fairly similar to the Korean word "oma."  But one student, a tall, chubby girl with a big smile, understood my question.

"Blah blah blah," she said to the others.  "Blah blah blah Oma."  They all responded energetically with throat slitting gestures and manic laughter.  Apparently a dead cat is endlessly amusing to my students.

"Did you (point at them) see (point at eyes) oma die (throat slit gesture)?" I asked.  Oh yes, they nodded enthusiastically.  Yes yes yes.

I was about to walk home, cradling my new lifemate, when I realized that perhaps the kid - a shy, skinny ten-year-old with glasses - who had originally shown me the kitten might have an attachment.

I took him upstairs and got a reluctant translation from SH (who is terrified of kittens).  As it turns out, my student has been raising her since her mom died.  So I would not, in fact, be taking my new companion home. 


In the meantime, I'm dog-sitting for a friend (who is on vacation), so the kitten shaped hole in my heart is being partly filled by an adorable little pup named Bentley. 

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Lost in translation...and relationships

My co-teacher uses quite a few special phrases/adjectives in English.  I can't really complain because she's far better at English than I will ever be at Korean, and I know there are many ESL teachers here whose co-teachers don't speak any English.

Still, some of our conversations are too priceless not to share.  For example, today I told her I was really hungry.

SH: Why are you so hungry?
Me: I don't know.  I ate breakfast.
SH: Maybe you are hungry because of food baby.

Clearly I explained the concept of food baby wrong to her (no, it's not something that makes you eat more food.  that's a real baby).  But I don't actually remember telling her about food babies, which is even scarier...did she pick it up somewhere else?  Could she possibly have another avenue into the world of American idioms?  Nah.  I do recall joking about being her being pregnant (she's always hungry), and she being quite horrified.  Maybe I toned it down to food babies after that.

And then of course there's the sad mistranslation that occurs everytime I get mail.  Everything coming through the post is a "package" according to her, so I have gone twice - twice - for my packages, only to discover small letters.  From the IRS.  Yes.  (If you're wondering, they were each letting me know that they had received my form 6166 application for US Residence. They were looking at it.  They would respond.  And if I had any questions, please don't hesitate to snail mail them.)

Our relationship conversations are priceless, partly because they deal with the same gender issues you'll find anywhere, but mostly because I get to tell her to break up with her boyfriend every week.  You can't do this with the goobers that your friends date because - as an article I recently read pointed out - one day you'll be invited to the wedding and you'll be that friend.  The one who didn't want them to work out.  The friend who hates love.  And if your friend actually ends up breaking with said deadbeat boyfriend, you'll be the know-it-all who didn't want them to work out. And hates love.  Lose Lose. 

(Also, my own personal problem, I'm not too good at denouncing bad boyfriends because I usually know them and get attached.  I see them as humans and want to give them a second chance.)

But with SH, I can freely and consistently urge her to break up with the jerk-who-tells-her-to-diet-when-she-is-clearly-size-zero because 1) I won't end up at the wedding, 2) if I do end up at the wedding I can chalk up our conversations to misunderstandings or cultural differences, and 3) I don't know him so I can demonize him to my heart's content. 

And no, I don't go around sprinkling Debbie Downer Dust on most relationships - I understand that the only two people who actually know what's going on are the people in the relationship itself (and even them only half the time).  But there are lines to be drawn, and SH's guy has crossed a few.  So I'm sprinkling DDD all over that mess.

Yup.

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The Fourth of July: Celebrating American Holidays Overseas

Experiencing national holidays away from your home country/family/friends, can be excellent or depressing depending on the circumstances.  The Fourth of July is a minor holiday compared to Thanksgiving/Christmas/Easter, but it's one that most Americans celebrate, and it's often more communal and friends-oriented (vs. more family oriented holidays).  Growing up, Independence Day was the one American holiday I often spent in the States, and it has a distinctly American flavor in my memory. (weird, right?)  I love the fireworks and the colors, the food, and the sense of unity.

I really enjoyed my Fourth of July in Korea, but it was definitely different than celebrations back home.

My Fourth of July in Korea:

Similarities to celebrating in the States:

- Food. Like any good American holiday, July 4th is a foodfest.  My friends and I made most of the traditional independence day foods: beer, hotdogs, potato salad, homemade mac'n'cheese, baked beans, and pie.  We also had the healthy additions of spinach dip and couscous.

- Friends.  The only difference is they aren't the ones you grew up with (or, in my case didn't grow up with). There's no reason to silently sit at home when you can share the holiday with others.  My friend J came up with the idea of a potluck, and it was a really enjoyable time. 

- The National Anthem.  OK well not really.  But I believe we got through a couple lines when everyone was leaving.

- Clothes:  Red. White. Blue. 

Differences to celebrating in the States:

- The main difference: No one in Korea knows or cares that it's the Fourth.  Or no non-American anyways.  Which is fine, because I doubt most Americans know the dates of other countries independence days. 

- I had to explain the holiday to my students.  Because their English is very low, it went something like this:

Me: (holding out right hand) America.  (holding out left hand) England.  Fight! (mime guns) America wins! (cheer)

Students: (cheer) Congratulations!

(My apologies to my English readers.  ESL has a tendency to strip away everything PC.)

- There were no big parties/gatherings at parks and football fields with fireworks and music in our area.  I imagine Seoul might have had a few options.  The American Embassy often puts on July 4th events in capital cities.

- No fireworks! 

- And...of course...no actual holiday.  We all had to work.  Disgraceful.



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