Mud Festival:
After last week’s delay, we finally made it to the mud festival! The festival was on the south west coast of the peninsula, about a three-hour bus/train ride from Seoul central bus terminal/Yongsan station. To be honest, I didn’t really have any idea what to expect. All the pictures advertising for the festival pictured smiling foreigners completely covered in mud. All the information online that I looked up beforehand – blogs and such – listed the festival as mainly a foreigner attraction. I was very surprised to find, upon arrival, that festival attendants leaned heavily on Koreans. All the tickets to actually go into the festival section were sold out, but the festival was much more than a few mud covered slides and muddy swimming pools. There were stations along the entire beach area filled with mud. Due to the mud’s “skin cleansing/healing” properties, these stations were very crowded. Almost everyone walking around, even if they didn’t pay for a ticket, was painted with mud. On that note, the festival was incredibly crowded. The streets along Daecheon beach were packed. I was very surprised by the beach actually. I did not expect to see large waves and open water. I thought that the “beach” would be very swampy and shallow over the mud flats. That said, I think that the waves were larger than normal as the lifeguards wouldn’t allow anyone to swim in the ocean deeper than waist level. Nevertheless, the beach was very crowded. Drunk couples, large groups of friends, old ladies, and families all played in the water together.
After last week’s delay, we finally made it to the mud festival! The festival was on the south west coast of the peninsula, about a three-hour bus/train ride from Seoul central bus terminal/Yongsan station. To be honest, I didn’t really have any idea what to expect. All the pictures advertising for the festival pictured smiling foreigners completely covered in mud. All the information online that I looked up beforehand – blogs and such – listed the festival as mainly a foreigner attraction. I was very surprised to find, upon arrival, that festival attendants leaned heavily on Koreans. All the tickets to actually go into the festival section were sold out, but the festival was much more than a few mud covered slides and muddy swimming pools. There were stations along the entire beach area filled with mud. Due to the mud’s “skin cleansing/healing” properties, these stations were very crowded. Almost everyone walking around, even if they didn’t pay for a ticket, was painted with mud. On that note, the festival was incredibly crowded. The streets along Daecheon beach were packed. I was very surprised by the beach actually. I did not expect to see large waves and open water. I thought that the “beach” would be very swampy and shallow over the mud flats. That said, I think that the waves were larger than normal as the lifeguards wouldn’t allow anyone to swim in the ocean deeper than waist level. Nevertheless, the beach was very crowded. Drunk couples, large groups of friends, old ladies, and families all played in the water together.
In fact, as the night progressed (More detail to follow) the young children were still up and mingling with the crowds of drunk Koreans. I lost count of the number of infants that were sleeping in strollers at the Hiphop concert… There is no way in hell I would bring my children to a beach concert where over half the people in attendance cannot see straight, not to mention the loud, blaring music. Anyway. As I mentioned earlier, the tickets to actually enter the mud festival area were sold out for Saturday, but the entire boardwalk and beach was part of the festival. I bought a lot of delicious street food! There were booths to get your caricature taken, and booths advertising mud skin care products. We spent the Saturday painting mud on our bodies and soaking in the mud festival culture. We ended up meeting and becoming friends with a group of English teachers, and I met a girl from Woodbury Minnesota! We bonded. Also, I forgot to bring my sunscreen and got super sunburned. Surprise. Surprise. Ah well. I now have weird handprints on my back since Christina added some lovely mud hands on my shoulders.
After spending all day at the festival, we headed back to our campsite (which we spent over an hour looking for when we first arrived, and after we found fritz who didn’t realize that the express bus extended its ride to the beach during the summer months, and got off at the station). The campsite was INCREDIBLY crowded. I have never experienced camping like this. The tents were practically on top of one another. You literally just pitched your tent wherever there was space. Our tent was small, so it wasn’t too hard to find a spot. But every other Korean family pitched a large canopy, plus a large tent, and usually a smaller tent inside that tent. It was like tentception. The people across the road from us had a large outdoor canopy, a screened-in large square tent, and inside that a third smaller tent. Everyone also had many large comfortable chairs around small electric grills. Our small tent was rather comical actually. It’s a tiny two person tent that we crammed four people into, including a 6ft 3in giant… Lets just say that I got veryyyyyyyy little sleep. Also, the next morning when we packed up I realized that I spent the entire night sleeping on a frickin rock. A rock. No wonder I was so uncomfortable, and squished against the side of the tent. Anyway. I’m getting ahead of myself! We heard, earlier that day, that there was going to be a hip-hop concert on the large stage by the beach, so we headed back over to the festival. It was low tide, and the beach was huge! I enjoyed walking back in the wet sand, and joining the HUGE crowd dancing and singing along with the music. I actually listen to Korean hip-hop/pop/rock etc. in my free time, so I had a lot of fun at the concert. I don’t think that Christina and Fritz really got the full experience tho… Although, there was this really really incredibly, mind-blowingly good beat boxer that Fritz fangirled over. The guy was amazing! I took a video of his performance, but I can’t upload it here :( The concert was one of my favorite things about the festival! After the concert ended, we went to find some places to dance, but the clubs along the beach were lame, empty, and required a cover charge. At this point I was pretty exhausted, so I went back to the tent to sleep while Christina, Fritz, and Justin (Justin joined them after sleeping a few hours, he wasn’t with us at the concert) went back out to the beach town.
The next morning I woke up at the butt crack of dawn. Literally. The tent was so crowded, and I was sleeping on that stupid rock, so I just got up and headed to the beach. The beach in the morning was fantastic. The air was still a comfortable temperature, and the morning fog masked all the old men and women digging for clams by the water. I ended up exploring and walking around for hours. Lol, also, I ran into a young Korean man sleeping on the street… so Fritz and Justin can feel a little better about themselves… Apparently it happens to everyone :) I had fun standing in the chilly water, and climbing some exposed rocks. There were a lot of shells and starfish! Once the beach got more crowded, around 8:00am, I met up with Christina and bought some Kimbop and coffee for breakfast. We then walked to a part of the beach we didn’t visit yesterday. The beach was very long! A lot longer than it looked at high tide. We walked until the end where there was a zipline (everyone waved to us as they passed over), and a lot of tide pools. Including a ton of seaweed!
On our way back to the campsite around lunch, we noticed that the beach was now incredibly crowded. Everyone seemed to be in the water on intertubes and inflatable boats. There were stations at the top of the beach to rent floating devices and an umbrella and mat station for the day. Earlier that morning I watched a worker set up all the umbrellas and mats, it looked like a lot of work! Since it was hot, Christina and I grabbed a lunch of cold noodles and ice cream before packing up and hailing a taxi to take us to the bus station. Unfortunately all the buses back to the Gangnam terminal were filled, so we headed over to the Daecheon train station to ride a train back. Thank goodness for the train station! I did not want to spend another night in that tent… There were no sitting tickets left until the 9:30pm train, so we bought standing tickets and I spent 98% of the three hour ride back in the isles. I can’t say that I really want to replicate that experience again, but I’m glad that we were able to get home at a reasonable time. All in all, I had a lot of fun at the festival, and it was certainly not what I was expecting! I pictured just rolling around on the mud flats, not a fenced off area of slides and mud filled swimming pools, I enjoyed the beach however, and talking to our new American and Korean friends!
My computer is broken, and will no longer allow me to post pictures… I'll try to figure something out, but chances are it is a broken cable. The cable that allows the computer to communicate with the hard drive… and then I can't do anything about it until I come home at the end of August. Hopefully the cable holds out till then! If I can fix this, ill post the rest of the pictures from this weekend at the beginning of next week's post!
Culture:
The hip-hip concert that I attended at the beach on Saturday made me interested in examining more about the history of kpop/hip-hop/rap. I have been listening to Korean music for many years now, and although I don’t like a lot of kpop (I prefer Korean alternative rock and indie bands) I do know a lot of the songs played on the streets here and in the shops. Modern Korean music stems from a rich history of beautiful, very spiritual and often haunting music. Korean classical music is very broad, coming in many forms, although it is generally called gugak. There are forms of music for various social situations, court/ritual (Aak – really old, and more modern – Hyang-ak), pansori (one singer and one drummer) etc. One of the most notable traditional Korean instruments is the gayageum (12 string kind of flat harp almost, but with a more twangy, earthy sound). Kpop on the other hand, consists of hip/hop, rap, pop, r&B music and emerged in the early ninties with the idol group Seo Taiji and Boys. The rise of the internet helped facilitate the “Korean wave” and popularized Korean music around the globe, especially in other parts of Asia. After our trip to Boreyong, while the guys and Christina and I were waiting for out train departure, there was a idol group competition of sorts playing on the tv, where idol groups would sing and dance to a single song. Fritz was amazed that there could be so many successful groups that looked identical to him. Even as a fan of Korean popular culture, I had to admit that from an outsiders perspective, much of kpop can look identical. Each group usually has around five members, and they are all young, good-looking, and thin. And I have noticed that each group generally follows similar styles, I believe to relate to the most types of people i.e. each group will have a “bad boy” with dyed hair and tattoos, and an “innocent cutie” with a bowl cut and a soft expression. I have to be honest, I didn’t like Korean music when I was first introduced. It took about a year of increasing interest before I finally got hooked! Understanding a different culture is always hard, but I believe that music is one of the easiest ways to understand another culture!
The hip-hip concert that I attended at the beach on Saturday made me interested in examining more about the history of kpop/hip-hop/rap. I have been listening to Korean music for many years now, and although I don’t like a lot of kpop (I prefer Korean alternative rock and indie bands) I do know a lot of the songs played on the streets here and in the shops. Modern Korean music stems from a rich history of beautiful, very spiritual and often haunting music. Korean classical music is very broad, coming in many forms, although it is generally called gugak. There are forms of music for various social situations, court/ritual (Aak – really old, and more modern – Hyang-ak), pansori (one singer and one drummer) etc. One of the most notable traditional Korean instruments is the gayageum (12 string kind of flat harp almost, but with a more twangy, earthy sound). Kpop on the other hand, consists of hip/hop, rap, pop, r&B music and emerged in the early ninties with the idol group Seo Taiji and Boys. The rise of the internet helped facilitate the “Korean wave” and popularized Korean music around the globe, especially in other parts of Asia. After our trip to Boreyong, while the guys and Christina and I were waiting for out train departure, there was a idol group competition of sorts playing on the tv, where idol groups would sing and dance to a single song. Fritz was amazed that there could be so many successful groups that looked identical to him. Even as a fan of Korean popular culture, I had to admit that from an outsiders perspective, much of kpop can look identical. Each group usually has around five members, and they are all young, good-looking, and thin. And I have noticed that each group generally follows similar styles, I believe to relate to the most types of people i.e. each group will have a “bad boy” with dyed hair and tattoos, and an “innocent cutie” with a bowl cut and a soft expression. I have to be honest, I didn’t like Korean music when I was first introduced. It took about a year of increasing interest before I finally got hooked! Understanding a different culture is always hard, but I believe that music is one of the easiest ways to understand another culture!
Research:
This week was exhausting… Christina and I doubled our workload this week, and broke a new record for time spent in the lab with an 8am to 9pm day! Yay! … Not really… We are trying to catch up in number of jumps for weighted females after we altered our experiment a few weeks ago. We are hoping to finish data collection by the end of next week! Unfortunately, because of some erratic weather, our water strider collecting locations have been incredibly unreliable, some days here is no water and others too much/water moves too fast. This has delayed our experiment a bit, but it is possible to collect a few strikers. Christina took advantage of a pair boots left at the pool to dive into the pond to catch the smallest (and most elusive) species. We also had our “internship completion” ceremony on Friday, where we turned in a written report of our research and were presented with very official certificates in a ceremony, followed by a dinner out! We went to a meat grilling restaurant again, and I impressed Kee-San with my mad meat eating skills. I. Ate. So. Much. Meat. It was incredible actually. I'm pretty sure I ate more meat than my body weight… But it was delicious! I'm going to miss these restaurants when I'm back in the states!!!
At last week’s dinner I was able to convince Kee-San to order chicken for dinner this week, and tonight we ordered in chicken with our lab assistants! I also got Chae-Hee and Hang-Ah to share embarrsing stories! I don’t want to embarrass them too much, but Chae-Hee’s story involved rolling head first down the isle of a city bus, and Hang-Ah’s story centered around a yogurt-impersonating cup of laxative (note, she didn’t eat it).
That’s all for this week. I apologize for the late post! My computer is on its last legs, I have to fight against random restarts/freezes and incredibly slow loading… Fingers crossed that I make it through the rest of the summer!
This week was exhausting… Christina and I doubled our workload this week, and broke a new record for time spent in the lab with an 8am to 9pm day! Yay! … Not really… We are trying to catch up in number of jumps for weighted females after we altered our experiment a few weeks ago. We are hoping to finish data collection by the end of next week! Unfortunately, because of some erratic weather, our water strider collecting locations have been incredibly unreliable, some days here is no water and others too much/water moves too fast. This has delayed our experiment a bit, but it is possible to collect a few strikers. Christina took advantage of a pair boots left at the pool to dive into the pond to catch the smallest (and most elusive) species. We also had our “internship completion” ceremony on Friday, where we turned in a written report of our research and were presented with very official certificates in a ceremony, followed by a dinner out! We went to a meat grilling restaurant again, and I impressed Kee-San with my mad meat eating skills. I. Ate. So. Much. Meat. It was incredible actually. I'm pretty sure I ate more meat than my body weight… But it was delicious! I'm going to miss these restaurants when I'm back in the states!!!
At last week’s dinner I was able to convince Kee-San to order chicken for dinner this week, and tonight we ordered in chicken with our lab assistants! I also got Chae-Hee and Hang-Ah to share embarrsing stories! I don’t want to embarrass them too much, but Chae-Hee’s story involved rolling head first down the isle of a city bus, and Hang-Ah’s story centered around a yogurt-impersonating cup of laxative (note, she didn’t eat it).
That’s all for this week. I apologize for the late post! My computer is on its last legs, I have to fight against random restarts/freezes and incredibly slow loading… Fingers crossed that I make it through the rest of the summer!