Wednesday was the last full day of school (though, on Thursday there was a half day for the closing ceremony and cleaning). On that day several of the third grade (9th graders) middle school students decided to be cool and leave campus for lunch. Bad idea, especially in Korea where, though against the governments approval, physical and corporal punishment is still widely used. Near the end of the lunch period, students kept getting dragged into the teacher's office and were forced to kneel in front of the vice principal's desk, being hit and kicked and screamed at by one of the head teachers. I hate that stuff, but I also know that it is part of Korean culture and I usually just try to ignore it. Oh yeah, also on that day a student decided it would be a cool idea to throw his own feces from a fourth floor window in the school. Silly boys.
I had plans to take a three-ish week vacation to China, cruising around, seeing the sights. Turns out that on July 1st China changed their visa requirements for foreigners living in South Korea. Yes, only foreigners living in South Korea. So, long story short, a bunch of us got screwed and were unable to obtain a tourist visa for China. The woman at the travel agency (the only way to get a visa) said the following when we asked her why this change occurred: "Because... America... no buy... made in China." Hmph. Whatever the reason, it was completely out of the blue and has left a lot of people hanging with tickets to China that they can't use. Lucky for me, I hadn't purchased my ticket so I could easily change my travel plans, which leads me to...
MONGOLIA! I'll be flying to Mongolia on July 28th and will be there for three weeks. I couldn't be more excited, though I know nothing about the country and was certainly not expecting to be in Mongolia anytime soon. Ahhhh, the beauty of life...
It's now Sunday evening and I just returned home from a weekend excursion with nearly 40 other foreigners from Jinju to the Boryeong Mud Festival located right on the beach at Daechon Beach. While living in Korea, one really does forget about the responsible, working life maintained during the week because it's like we're on vacation every single weekend doing something novel and fun. The Mud Festival really is just what it sounds like: mud pits, mud puddles, mud pools, mud slides, mud wresting and more--set up for thousands and thousands of people to romp around in! Somebody in Jinju had the genius idea to rent a norae-bus (basically, a bus with karaoke and disco type lights) to drive us there and back, the drive being about four hours each way. We left Friday night after 9pm, so that bus ride can pretty much be described as a four-hour long party with non-stop karaoke singing. Epic. That certainly started the weekend off right...
We also had a pension to ourselves (similar to a condo, Korean style), so all 35 or so of us slept on the floors of the four rooms in the pension. Sleeping on floors lined up like sardines has become quite a natural part of my life over here and in fact, I think I am seriously going to miss it! Saturday's activities varied between playing in the mud (and all other things related like wrestling with strangers in pools of mud and going face-down a huge inflatable slide against the rules--oops!), swimming in the ocean, eating, napping, drinking, and marveling at all of the foreigners. I've never seen so many foreigners in one place for my entire duration here in Korea--it was a little strange! I actually didn't even feel like I was in Korea, between all of the other foreigners and wandering around the streets barefoot wearing only a bikini. That's quite liberal and risque for Korea...
Sunday, today, was far more relaxed. Since we had to check out of our pension at 11am, we just took all of our stuff down to the beach and spent the next several hours there until our 2pm departure. A few friends and myself went back to the mud area and got our bodies painted with red, blue and yellow mud and when we lined up together, our bodies said "I (heart) Jinju!" We were quite popular with the 50 or so photographers wandering around. There was a ring of them around us for about five solid minutes, asking us to pose this way or that--it was madness! They loved it.
I could say soooo much more about the weekend but I'm quite exhausted right now so I'll just say... it was yet ANOTHER epic weekend in Korea!
I didn't take my own camera to the mud, but here are some pictures from the bus ride and some pictures that I've stolen from facebook:
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