Mud Festival Slide Show

Mud Festival: Checked that box

Mud Festival is one of the most famous events in the foreigner crowd in Korea.  Almost everyone goes.  All the groups fill up huge trips down to Boryeong to drink and act like fools while covered head to toe in filth.

I signed up for Lost in Seoul’s trip down to Mud Festival and it was a lot of fun.   After a few hours on a bus, we arrived at Dacheon beach.  There was some confusion getting the tickets which the Mud Festival people just instituted this year.  After standing in the rain for a long time while we got our tickets we got into the festival proper.

There were a handful of rubber slides and other kinds of activities in the main mud festival area.  They were pretty fun.  The water slide and the obstacle course were especially fun.   They also had mud wrestling, a mud prison, a place where you could play muddy tug of war and mud painting.

When  I had my fill of mud I went on Dacheon Beach.  This beach was very shelly and rough to walk on as it was, and then people threw a ton of trash on it.    Still the water was very comfortable and cleansing after spending the day getting hot and muddy.

At night Lost in Seoul had a great barbecue.   Burgers were cooked, and a good time was had by all.   Throughout the festival they  had entertainment ranging from different bands playing on a beach side stage to a grand fireworks display at the end of the first night.

All in all Mud Festival was a great box to check on my time in Korea.  I’m glad I went, and Sally organized a great trip for Lost in Seoul.   

A taste of the Busan nightlife

Last night on Haeundae beach,  started with me setting off some fireworks.  I stood, with giant sand sculptures behind me, on the beach and lit a rod of fireworks and they shot out over the East Sea.

That was pretty cool.  From there we headed to the 14th floor Rock and Roll bar, which is a bar which sits on the top floor of a 14 story tower overlooking the beach.  I was somewhat dissappointed that in a club called the Rock and Roll bar, they only played a mix of pop music and hip-hop.   They did however make an excellent gin and tonic for 5,000 Won so not all was lost.

Somewhere in this time I had to go get cash but all the major banks had closed up.  This normally wouldn’t be a big deal many conveniant stores have twenty-four hour ATMs.  I walked to three broken ones before I finally found a machine which would dispense with some cash.    Just at the point where I was starting to feel really dumb.

After about 90 minutes there, we set out for a norae bang.  We spent about two hours there.  Ordered some food–a french fry platter with pat bing su (an ice, beans, fruit and cream mix)  It was pretty good–and the singing was fun as it always is.  I  sang a very well timed version of Obladi Oblida among many other things.

About 3:30 in the morning we rolled back into our hostel, we were very tired, we were very merry.

All in all, it had a very different feel than the nightlife district we were on Saturday.  That was much more Korean, whereas Haeundae had a lot more foreigners.  Also Saturday’s was spread out and seemed to be very mixed.  Haeundae seemed very concentrated along the strip.

Public transit

I took the bus at Ohio State and that was pretty nice.  I had a 30 minute shuttle to just outside my door for three years with the University village system.  And then their was the CABS and COTA so there were always a lot of options for public transit.

And that system, however wonderful it is for the midwest, just can’t even hold a candle to the public transit system here in Seoul.

The first option for getting around longer distances  in the city are the fast Subway cars.  They’ll cart you to just about every corner of the city from Inchon all the way  across Seoul proper.  The kicker is the subway stations are incredibly clean and safe.  The only bad side about these is that they’re only open till midnight so the 5 am subway is often crowded with people going home.

Getting off the subway will often lead to getting on the bus.  Now we have buses in Ohio and they’re alright.  But the buses here in Seoul are really amazing.  They run at frequent intervals most places.  My friend has a like 15 minute bus wait occasionally if he gets out at the worst possible time to find one particular route to take him to a satellite city.

My bus on the other hand is seemingly always there.  Like literally always during  bussiness hours.  The other amazing thing is there is a bus lane through the whole city so  you never wait in traffic on a bus.  Just zip from here to there.

Now, as I mentioned before,   the subway does close early which brings us to the last leg of  Seoul’s public transit system.  The Taxis.  They’re kind of expensive, for Seoul–but a trip across a good chunk of the city won’t even add up to 20 bucks.  Sometimes got to help them get there so if you don’t speak  korean that’s not so hot but whatever.

The nice thing is they do run all night and aren’t any more expensive at 3 in the morning than they were at 6 the night before.

Korea the story so far

So, I thought I’d use this blog as a space to write about my adventures in Korea so far.  One week in and I’d recommend anyone who’s even thinking about it taking the opportunity to come out here and teach for a year.

I passed training Friday night and got moved on Saturday.  This week I’m going to start teaching kids for April so that will be a real test.   I don’t even know what level I’m going to be on for sure yet as I’ve had the most threadbare meetings with people

I moved in to my apartment Saturday.  I got an apartment in a pretty nice section of Seoul, a mall and a bunch of big department stores nearby along with more bars and restaurants than I could count.

Not only are the tons of Korean places but there is also a Dunkin Donuts just across the street where I can get a coffee and  donut for 2500 Won so that’s pretty nice.

My apartment so far has been pretty sweet aside from the completely ridiculous looking pink comforter.

Josh from training is here too he’s just two floors up despite being at a different school It’ll be nice to have someone closeby as I dunno what I would have done over the weekend by myself here.

I wish I had some pictures to share but I somehow forgot my camera in America so until i start making some money or maybe get a phone I won’t be able to add pictures to the blog.

I’ve met so many awesome people here, everyone from my training group seemed really cool and it’s led to me having like 20 new Facebookfriends or something ridiculous in a week.  It feels like I’ve been here for a year already and I haven’t even started my job that’s how crazy it’s been.

I’ve probably spent more time out drinking in the bars than i did in college–yes I was a huge nerd in college.  Darn it’s a lot of fun here to go out drinking and cheap too.

A first food note.  yesterday I had Kim Chi Chigae for lunch and it was really delicious though spicy enough to blow your head off your shoulders.