Mud.

Once again I went to the Boryeong Mud Festival. What could be more fun than lots of mud to play with, a nice sea to wash off in and a beautiful beach to relax on?! We played in mud during the day. Mud gets EVERYWHERE! Sometimes you even find more mud in your ears a week later! The stores (HERE's an example at the Family Mart that is next to the festival ground) and restaurants around are used to the couple of weeks of mud and don't mind being filled with drippy and muddy people. The money is all soggy and dirty but no one seems to mind.Then in the evening sat and enjoyed some drinks as well as the festival music. The last night of the festival there was a special rock concert: Kim KyungHo band, who I've known of since I first came to Korea. I've had one of his songs in my Ipod since I got it. After the concert they had the festival closing fireworks. Beautiful. Then we sat on the beach and enjoyed the rest of the evening. The lights shining on the beach are bluish. I love it!

Lantern Festival

This past weekend was a long weekend - May 5th was Children's day. Next weekend is also a long weekend - May 12th this year is Buddha's birthday. Every year to celebrate Buddha's birthday, there is a week long festival. This past weekend was the beginning of the festival. Sunday was the big day with all sorts of activities from traditional performances and traditional arts and crafts to temple food tasting.Once in Insadong, we wandered around a bit and stopped to check out one of the performances - a form of Lion Dance. Really cool. [For something really cool, check out some of the clips from the World Lion Dance competitions - AMAZING!!! Check out how they mount the poles that they dance on.]Kinda cute. They even had the lions stalking and pouncing on a little toy rabbit. I could SO see my cat in the actions.
I missed out on the lotus lantern making but did get to make mini lotus flowers. I finished just as it started to rain.[at the temple gate]
I went over to the local temple to wander about for a bit.[golden Buddha - there are 3 of them][carvings on temple doors]They had 1000 (+?) lanterns in the shape of a lotus flower in front of the temple (and basically covering the entire area).[I LOVE how it looks like a rainbow lantern tree!!!]I love the lanterns!!![traditional Korean music and performances]
Then it was off to watch the parade. It is a huge parade, usually lasting around 3 hours (7-10PM) and is followed by a concert and dancing in the streets.The street was lit up with giant balloons.As the parade was starting, there were people handing out free things such as little plastic fans (advertising some company or another) and little collapsible plastic candle lanterns. I got two as the first one didn't have a candle, and as I am a foreigner, there was a search on for another one. :)For the most part, it is a Buddhist parade with monks, and throngs of people carrying all kinds of lanterns.Many (most) were dressed up in the traditional Korean clothing - Hanboks.There were giant lit up floats of Buddhas, dragons and such.[Buddhist symbol][a pagoda that grows and shrinks][Chonjang Chonwang, Guardian of the South]
A few of the groups were International Buddhist groups - Thai Buddhists, Cambodian Buddhists, Tibetan Buddhists, etc. I always enjoy the parade. It would have been much nicer, though, if the weather was more cooperative. It was windy and cold with bits of rain now and then. Kinda put a damper on the enjoyment. Oh well. I loved it all anyway. :)

mud

I spent the weekend at the 2007 Boryeong Mud Festival at Daecheon Beach. I went to the festival in 2004 and had a great time so had to go back.
It was an expensive weekend but well worth it. All of the trains to the place were almost completely sold out a week before and many of the hotels as well. Getting a hotel was a bit of a job. Many of the places just hung up on me - "No English". I ended up having a Korean friend phone for me.The mud festival is all about the mud, of course. Basically, you play in the mud, let it dry, then go for a swim, then play in the mud some more, let it dry, go for a swim, etc. There were a lot of mud related activities set up all over the place:mud prison,"SUVIVAL FIGHTING" mud wrestling, mud slides, mud baths (such as the pool that Kate and her boyfriend are in below), mud massages,mud treatment self painting, etc.(ummmm... i don't think i am THAT skinny)Playing in the sand. It was decided that I should be buried alive.
The mud is a special mud from the hills near Boryeong. They also sold several mud products - facial masks, cleansers and creams, shampoo and conditioner, soaps, etc.
We went down and bumped into several of my friends here and there.I saw my friend Kate for the first time in almost 2 years. She was one of my classmates at TEFL International in Alexandria, Egypt. She was teaching in Korea a while ago, but was quite far away from Seoul, and then left early. She is back with her boyfriend again, and they are now closer to where I am. No excuses this time for not getting together.
For dinner Saturday night, we had a bit of a hard time figuring out what to eat. All of the restaurants were seafood restaurants, mostly raw fish, seafood soup or shellfish - and incase you don't know, I can't stand seafood. There were a few meat restaurants, but being with a Muslim sort of cut all of those out of our options. Revo wanted to try the shellfish so in we went.He didn't particularly like it. I ate a few little clams drenched in a spicy sauce. It was definitely not worth the price (NOT cheap). I think if he had realized the price, he would have eaten a lot more - it was sort of an all-you-can-eat/free-refills sort of thing. Oh well. The Korean pancake that came with the shellfish was good.
Later on, we went back to the beach and to enjoy the music.(the light in the distance at 10 times optical zoom) There was a big concert going on. We couldn't see the performance, but the music was good. We ended up missing the fireworks, though. They weren't on until around 11:30 or so - I thought they were supposed to be much earlier, and for some reason, figured we had missed them. I heard them from my hotel room. :( They lasted so long and from what I heard, were beautiful.
The next day we decided to spend relaxing. Since we had to check out of the hotel by 12, we decided not to play in the mud and left most of our things at the hotel until we had to leave. It was nice being able to just sit around and enjoy the nice weather. I was sort of wishing that we could play in the mud again. Sunday they came out with different colored mud. It would have been nice to have been blue. ;)While we were wandering around, there were several little booths/shops doing spray on tattoos. Revo got a cool spider tattoo on his arm (ugh... spiders).Walking along the beach.
Waiting for the train:outside the station