July 10-12 weekend: MUDFEST

No joke, every weekend in July just keeps getting better and I really think this is going to carry on into the next few months. At least that is what I hope. As much as I say it, I don’t understand how the weekends can always top the past weekends but they do! Our amazing recruiters, Joanne and Troy as you know are the creators of the Dongtan Clan group and Joanne puts together these trips for foreigners in advance and lines everything up with collecting the money, getting train tickets, rooms at hotels and things like that.

This weekend was a festival in a city called Boreyeong and the festival is called "Mudefest." Whatever you are thinking from the name of the festival is probably correct. I will get into the actual festival later in the post. There were about 50 of us in the Dongtan Clan that went together and I would say about 45 of the 50 arrived on Saturday via train and early in the morning. Lucky for Daniel and I being so close with Joanne and Troy, they were able to get the two of us on the train Friday night after work with a few other awesome members of the Dongtan Clan and Joanne and Troy as well. We figured we might as well start the party as early as we could after a long week of teaching little kids English all week. As you know from my last post, I love taking the train and that is what we did to go to Mudfest. We caught the train around 8:45 PM and no joke, when we walked on the train, I could not believe the amount of foreigners there were on every car of the train. If I had pictures, you would never guess I was in an Asian country. Without a doubt for the first time, the Asians were the minority in this country. It was only a two hour train ride but it was the biggest party on every car. Daniel and I were walking to the food/beer car and we had to go through two cars first and in both cars everyone was drinking, listening to music, dancing, laughing and anything else you can think of that is fun. Walking up the aisles alone you instantly were chatting with others that you had no clue who they were. I almost wished that this train ride was 5 hours instead of just the two. Another really cool thing about the trains here in Korea is that they have rooms with a chair massage and rooms that have karaoke machines in them. It truly is a party train.

Once we arrived into the city, the 15 or so of us grabbed taxis to our motel we were staying in and though we had a LONG day ahead of us tomorrow, the party had already started and we definitely continued it. A group of us walked around the city drinking beers and touring and then we all ended up at a "BBQ Clam" restaurant around midnight and this was my first time ever at one of these kinds of places. We were served the biggest clams and huge mussel looking things and cooked them on grills in front of us and the way you knew the clams were cooked and ready to eat was when the shell popped open. It was incredible delicious. After hanging out here for a while, we ended up randomly running into some friends we met the 4th of July weekend prior to this one in Pusan. They were our buddies from the U.S. Navy and they were eating at the same restaurant. Daniel and I ended up walking around with them on the beach and went to a couple bars but there was surprisingly not much going on Friday night because everyone was in preparation for Saturday's Mud festival. Finally, around 3 AM Daniel and I decided to call it a night because we had no idea what we were in for the next day.

Once we woke up, Joanne, Troy, Daniel and I all headed for some breakfast and were waiting eagerly for our other friend to arrive and get the party started. The other members of the Dongtan Clans train arrived before noon and they had all gotten a great night sleep in advance to prepare for the day so Daniel and I knew we were going to have to step our game up because they were expecting good things out of us. Of course, we were prepared.

To give you a little insight about the mud festival, it is this huge event in Korea for foreigners and some Koreans that happens for two weekends consecutive and it is all about mud. The festival is right on the beach and there are many different mud events. For the different kinds of events, there is a huge blow up pit filled with mud that people can go into and jump around splashing mud on each other, there is a "king of the mountain" pit filled with mud where people pretty much wrestle to be the king of the mountain, there is a mud slide that was AWESOME. Instead of it being like a slip and slide with water, it is mud. There are people that work the event who have a hose giving off mud and they will hose you down, there are people holding buckets to dump mud on you as well. There was also concerts going on during the events for people to chill and listen to or you could just keep playing with the mud. Also on the beach, there was mud troughs where you could go fix your spots or put mud on your body. There were paint brushes as well to paint it on. If you wanted to get clean, you just went into the ocean and cleaned off. They say that the mud is actually really good for your skin. They actually sell it to people. I know it sounds really gross altogether but before the whole event, Daniel and I both said that we didn’t think we would touch the mud because it does not sound too appealing. Within the first five minutes of being on the beach, we had already hit up the mud troughs and covered our whole bodies. It was awesome!

It was actually not that nice of a day but with the mud and the alcohol being consumed, that was the least of the worries. It even started raining towards the end of the day but it didn’t slow any of the foreigners down. We did all the mud events and walked around the festival and it was amazing the amount of foreigners that were there. Everyone was having a blast. Once the sun began to go down, we began to head back to the motel where we all showered up and got ready for the night. A long and entertaining day was again, only just beginning. Once we all showered, we headed to one of the bars where there were not many people yet and found a perfect location. It was called "Orange" and was right on the beachfront area. There were about 25 of us and they actually lined tables up for us so we could have one HUGE group. The amount of different drinking games going on at once is indescribable. We showed up at this place around seven and ended up leaving around midnight. Some headed to the club that was nearby and others headed back to the motel and a few of us just walked around the town. Where else can you just walk around a town with a beer in hand? I even saw some people walking down the streets with a fifth of Patron Tequila. I don’t know the laws but have never seen anyone get in trouble or be told to get rid of it. I am worried when I come home that I will get an open container ticket without realizing that we are not allowed to do it in the states.

Our trains the next day (Sunday) were not scheduled to be until around 5 in the afternoon because the mud festival is a Saturday/Sunday event and Joanne wanted to give us the whole experience. Well unfortunately, the weather on Sunday was unreal. I am very sure that it was a monsoon. It is monsoon season right now and I think that was the first one of the season. I have never seen rain so bad in Korea the whole five months I had been here, the wind was unbelievably strong to the point where it was stopping you from walking and the waves in the ocean were massive. Because of this, the mud festival was not going on and most everyone tried to leave early. For us, it did not stop us. Some of the Dongtan Clan including myself was in full party mode and we kept it going. Since we could not be outside for too long, we took it to the bars and kept it going. Once it was time to catch the train, some would have thought there was nothing else going on but once we headed down to the food/beer train, it was one massive party. I ordered my beers and never left the car one time until we arrived. I met so many awesome people on that car and we all just shared stories from the weekend and all the crazy stuff that happened. It is so amazing meeting other foreigners here because so many of them understand that we are all there for the same reason; the experience! The train ride was too short and once we arrived to our stop, the party finally ended. It was a little sad but I think there will be many upcoming weekends that are a little similar to that one. This weekend was amazing...one of the best ones yet!

I am beginning to notice a trend here in my last few posts and the common theme is the partying on the weekends. It is wild but for some reason, that is just what they do in this country!! I am just taking in the moment and having a blast with every opportunity thrown at me. It is funny because I chose to come to Korea to teach English and I feel like I am now here for the experience and the party. I sometimes feel like it is college and more all over again...AWESOME! This will be my last post for anywhere from 3 weeks to a month because in two weekends from now, Daniel, Michael, Sam and I are heading to Bali, Indonesia for our summer vacation. Daniel and I are staying at the same resort where we split the room (which is amazing by the way) and Michael and Sam may stay with us some or will just be looking for hostels and backpacking. A little insight, we are looking for this to be the ultimate experience. We have one full week and are looking to bungee jump, snorkel, whitewater rafting, cave tours and much more. The upcoming posts should be very good so be on the lookout for them.