Well, I have to admit that I’m writing this retrospectively, because as I was finishing up my blog posts from the first year, I realized there was a significant gap of reporting between the middle of the summer and the end of the summer. So here is a smattering of updates from that period of time:
-
Every year, Mud Festival is held in a nearby
city called Boryeong (which is more widely known as Daecheon Beach). They started the Mud Festival a number of
years ago in order to spread the message of the supposed healing properties of
mud. Eventually, it somehow became a big
party weekend for foreigners. It’s worth
noting that it was kind of surreal to look up and down the street at this time,
because they were filled with foreigners.
The population of Boryeong for this weekend was probably 75-85%
foreigners. Honestly, it felt like a
college spring break party all weekend long.
For this event, a friend of a friend solidified
a pension-style suite for us – 35 of us to be exact. We all arrived at our pension about the same
time, even though we took different transportation to get there. We split up for dinner. I went with Kate, JMo, Nicole, Nelson, and Marisol
to a seafood restaurant (that’s really the only acceptable option when you eat out in
Boryeong). We were served
all-you-can-eat grilled shellfish with all the usual sides. During our dinner,
our waitress dropped an oyster onto our friend, Nicole, and the waitress
exclaimed something in Korean. Since
Nicole is Korean Canadian and is learned in the language, she understood what the waitress said, and told us
while laughing, “She said, ‘Oh, the precious clam!’" Also, while we were
eating, the two biggest troublemakers from our orientation, Melody and Kylie,
surprised us by running by us squirting water guns at us (we were sitting
outside). It was a drive-by! After we returned to the pension, the real
party started! We all sat out on the
patio on a picnic-style bench and played drinking games. We also lit sparklers and danced in the
streets and the beach. Hilariously
enough, I ran into a Korean guy I met at my gym in Daejeon while in Boryeong. He had moved away a while ago to get a job in
a different city, but we randomly ran into each other on the streets of
Boryeong, so he hung out with us for a while that night. A pleasant surprise!
So, we ended up partying far into the night
on Friday night. On Saturday, we woke up
hungover and groggy. Some of us were
still drunk. Some of us grabbed a
bit ‘o the hair of the dog. After the
lot of us was somewhat presentable, we staggered over to the Mud Festival
area. They had mud baths, inflatable
slides, inflatable pools, and all other types of things. The first thing we did was cover ourselves in
the cool mud. We decided to go down one
of the slides, but it took forever for us to get through the line, so we were
kind of discouraged from doing any more of the amusement type things after
that. We mostly just hung out at the
beach and swam in the ocean, while occasionally covering ourselves in mud. And of course, drinking. Kate and I took a mid-day break to eat lunch
at a seafood restaurant, and had more or less the same meal as we did on Friday
night (no complaints there!) Our server
was a Korean university student with near perfect English. He had been studying at a university in
Tennessee and was back in Korea during summer break. We talked to him for a while. Seemed like a pretty cool guy!
A fun, but very tiring weekend. That's for damn sure.
-
In the chaos of the end of the first year, our family (Kate, Liz,
Daniel, Colin, and I) scheduled one last family trip to Jeonju. Jeonju
is known for two things really, their bibimbap (an extremely common and
old Korean dish) and the Hanok Village, which is a traditional village.
I call this trip our "Grumpy Trip to Jeonju", because almost all of us
were in a bad mood: Kate had stayed up all night partying, Daniel had
just gotten back from a school trip to Jeju and had had no time to
relax, I was pissy because no one else helped me organize our trip and
continued to seem disinterested in planning our precious day in Jeonju,
and Liz was tired and was having a fight with her long distance
boyfriend. Predictably, Colin was the only one who didn't seem to be in
a bad mood.
- We had one last hurrah before everyone left on the second to last weekend of August. Queenie and Xavier have a friend in Seoul, and his birthday happened to be the night before Queenie and Xavier were planning on leaving Korea. So, it turned into a birthday party, and a massive going away party for not only Queenie and Xavier, but for a LOT of people. We started the night off with a rooftop party right next to our favorite party area of Seoul, Hongdae. Around midnight, everyone left to go to "THE park", which is a big open park right in the middle of Hongdae. Often, people drink there before going out...or just drink there the entire night. Once we got to the park, we noticed that people were boxing in the middle of the park (I guess this had been a trend all summer long). They were using gloves, so I guess it was a little safe, but it certainly seemed pretty rowdy. As there was a boxing match going on, we saw a (what I would presume to be) Korean man climb a tree in nothing but speedos. From what I recall, he then started yelling in Korean. We lost track of him for a while, but then we saw a big commotion in the crowd. What looked like a Korean student was trying to chase the guy in the speedo, but the guy in the speedo was running away. Later, someone said they saw the guy in the speedo in the bathroom yelling and spitting at the mirror. I guess that guy has...problems. One of our friends who lives in Seoul said, "Yea, he comes to the park and acts crazy like that every weekend."
From the park we moved to Thursday Party (the name of a bar), where we spent some time. It was there that Xavier departed. He had a very early flight on Sunday morning, which he was clearly going to be intoxicated for...but really, what other way is there to catch your last flight out of Korea?
Around this point is when the waterworks started. Kate said goodbye to Chubb and started to cry a lot. Then I hugged her and started to cry a lot. Eventually we collected ourselves enough to join the rest of the group. I think after that we just made our way to Taco Bell, which is (unfortunately) our Hongdae tradition. Then we made the walk back to our hostel.
The next day we went to Craftworks for lunch and had a good, but kind of sad, last meal together (Me, Daniel, Kate, Liz, Colin, Jessica). After that, we walked together to the subway where I said goodbye to my two little "sisters", Kate and Liz. There were a lot of tears and long hugs.
From the park we moved to Thursday Party (the name of a bar), where we spent some time. It was there that Xavier departed. He had a very early flight on Sunday morning, which he was clearly going to be intoxicated for...but really, what other way is there to catch your last flight out of Korea?
Around this point is when the waterworks started. Kate said goodbye to Chubb and started to cry a lot. Then I hugged her and started to cry a lot. Eventually we collected ourselves enough to join the rest of the group. I think after that we just made our way to Taco Bell, which is (unfortunately) our Hongdae tradition. Then we made the walk back to our hostel.
The next day we went to Craftworks for lunch and had a good, but kind of sad, last meal together (Me, Daniel, Kate, Liz, Colin, Jessica). After that, we walked together to the subway where I said goodbye to my two little "sisters", Kate and Liz. There were a lot of tears and long hugs.
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