~MUDFEST 2010~

YAY FOR MUD!!!

Erin, Inae & Moi

Washing off a bit in the ocean

Doing a beach dance with some crazy Koreans

These wild ladies went into the mud pits- I declined...I'm not so keen on eating mud

Clay mess- definitely amazing

Cleaning out muddy ears!

Inae & Me

Nick's sweet hat & Erin

A Korean night wouldn't be complete without some sweet sweet Norebong!

Mudfest '10...where to begin! Well it was definitely an amazing, once in a life time kind of experience. Since hearing about this months ago, it was something that I vowed I would do while in Korea- it was great! There were lots of people arranging rides, places to stay but I ended up going with a group of people- many teachers at my school, along with some friends and we boarded a bus and headed out to the beach. It was a 2 hour ride to get there, along the coast somewhere....Boryeong was the place that hosted it. We rolled into town- a small little town that hosted many seafood places- clearly being next to the sea. I have never in my life seen some of the seafood I had seen at this place. These clams in particular, which being from Essex County, I can only describe as man sized fists Zebra muscles. No idea what they were but that's exactly what they looked like. There was also the "Dog Penis" which I'm not sure if that's the actual name for it, but that's what I heard it called...it's this eel like big fat snake thing...guess where it coined the name from? I ended up NOT trying anything like that...rather opted for pizza when the time came for a meal....

Back to the festivities...

We got to Boryeong mid monsoon or typhoon- I forget exactly what I was told. Horrible. It was cold, rainy, windy, etc. BUT I was NOT going to let this ruin the weekend...we were, afterall, going to be covered in mud- who cares if it was rainy!?

We headed over to the pits, it was early- about 11am. Grabbed some cans of beer and got the party started! I was a little more leary to just hop into it full force but Erin and Inae were all about it!! They started off in the mud jail where the sprayed you down with warm mud- it was actually really nice mud, like spa mud. We ended up going through an obstacle course- with mud obviously. The girls hit up the mud pits for a little toss around- I opted out of this, yes, again. I don't know. I was too nervous to break an arm or something, or perhaps eat a mouth full of mud? Didn't appeal to me- the other girls definitely did eat their fair share of mud!! Mmmm... We went down the big mudslide, played in the ocean for a bit, partied on the beach. They had some performances, lots of music, huge hoses that were spraying people on the beach as they raved about...all in all, great times!! There was also a mud fight, I hid behind a Jeep- this time it was like hard clay...Erin got hit in the face, didn't feel great at all. This was the mud that actually stuck to you. It was nice to carry around a big wad of it- came in handy for a hot guy on the beach that was looking to be mudded down. I ended up running into a few people I knew were in Korea but hadn't seen yet- that was nice.

Later that evening we ended up attempting to get all the mud off of us and went out. It continued to rain on and off. We went to sing Kareoke for a bit and went to a few bars...met some Korean guys and hung out with them- even though they didn't speak English and we didn't speak Korean. Made for an interesting night....all in all Mudfest '10 was a great experience!!!