MUD

Mud Festival! This past weekend a group of friends and I went to Boryeong, which is on the western coast of Korea for it's annual Mud Festival. This small seaside city receives thousands of visitors for 2 weeks in July, but it's the final weekend that brings in the most patrons. It's probably most popular among foreigners, but it attracts all kinds. They haul in all this mud (from where? I don't know...) and hose it into these sort of troughs where you can paint mud on with a paintbrush, or just delve right in with your hands. The mud is supposed to be good for your skin; it was nice and smooth. The festival had inflatible slides, mud wrestling, music, and a whole bunch of stuff. Even fireworks later that night!

My group went with a tour group, Seoulite, which supplied us with a bus to and from the city and a single room (for 10 people...) in a pension to stay in. In retrospect, we could have done all right on our own for a bit cheaper, but there was no guaranteeing anything if we had. We were new to the whole thing, so we took the safer route.

Also, we bought these tickets, like, 3 months ago anticipating it to be a big weekend... and it was! I had a lot of fun lathering up that mud, getting it all in my hair and on my clothes and all my little nooks and crannys, and then rinsing off in the sea just to do it all over again! Of course, the beer helped too.

It rained a little bit during the day, which didn't really bother me seeing as I was already wet and dirty. It rained more later that night, but by that time we had retired back to the pension where we proceeded to play some card games, talk about I don't remember, and we even played EPIC MAFIA! That's right, Marybeth, I taught these people how to play Epic Mafia (a game which involves mafia members anonymously murdering innocent people and the investigation to figure out who dunnit. I think it was originally an online game? But the ONeill's adopted it and adjusted to play with a group of 6 or more). We had a blast and I hope we'll play it again in the future. Anyone who hasn't played it, try it! It's super easy and can get really intense!

And I'm not entirely sure how I managed it, but my camera survived the trip! I really wanted to take pictures, but I knew it would be a risk, what with all the mud and water and drunk foreigners.. But I wore a sort of fanny pack (it's actually a money belt... although, they did offer some necklace bags you could buy to hold your money/cellphone stuff) and wrapped it up in a plastic bag. And lucky me, it all worked out in the end! Yaay! This kind of stuff never happens to me, I'm such a klutz...

before...

...during... (p.s. i love the ass grabbing in the background)

... after! (photo credit: ryan mclaughlan)

PRECIOUS

alyissa and monica!

 Mud Fest is serious business.

sean is super thrilled despite his unfortunate expression. i was invited up there, OKAY?

A few of us didn't want to wait around for the bus to leave at 3 pm on Sunday, so we took the KoreaRail train home, which was way faster, got us home way earlier, but we had to sacrifice some comfort and opted for standing tickets. Yeah, the train sells standing tickets... Luckily, there were some floor space to pop a squat on.


And congratulations to my little sister for her graduation! I can't believe you're all done, girl. Like, I really can't believe it because I didn't know it happened until Mom told me after it had happened. Man, I'm a bad big sister! I should send you some sort of gift or card.... but then again you got me NOTHING from your cruise, not even something from the Wizarding World of Harry Potter! Ah well, I'm not one to hold a grudge...




Until next time, loves!
Anna