The Mud Festival!

We woke up to pouring rain on Saturday morning. Bummer! We weren't sure if it would still work out to go to the Mud Festival. James ran over to the school to ask SunHwa if she was still planning to take us. She told him she'd come over after her class finished, so by 9:30am she was at the house. I was not so sure about braving the weather to go, but Kendra was quite adamant in her desire to play in the mud. Being practical, I first insisted that we call the place to make sure it was not closed for the day. It was open, so away we went! It rained and stormed the first 45 minutes while driving. Then, the rain tapered off and the sun played peek-a-boo for awhile. Just 5-8 minutes before arriving, the sun came out in full force! Unbelievable!!!

Arriving in the town of "BorYeong" - there was a water park...note the jellyfish at the top! John's favorite were the little mud charactars above the Mud Festival sign.



Driving and finding a place to park was a chore and took a good 40-45 minutes. We finally found a spot at about the farthest dead end of town. Our expert picture critique, Kendra, says that the picture does not do the congestion justice.(Well, she pointed that out anyway, and I am reporting it in my own words on the blog...she says she does not use such fancy words!!!) There was a lot of camping grounds - you can see a tent on the far right of the picture. Then, right away, we saw what is now a normal sight for us but new for Kendra...two girls holding hands - just good friends, nothing more.



We used our umbrellas for the sun. And then we got our first glimpse of a sandy beach in Korea.


Our first activity was the mud slide. We waited in line (a very muddy one!) for about 30 minutes to go down. First we were instructed to sit at the top and wait while we were doused with water from above. Then, the command was given, "Go!" Down we went, slipping and sliding along in the muddy goo. Once we reached the bottom, we were all drenched in the muck.

Next we all trooped down to the mud painting umbrellas. Joy was a good face-painter.

We did not stop painting until all of us were not only drenched, but completely covered in the stuff.

Now, for the mud pool with a regurgitating octopus!!

After getting all "cleaned" off, Joy found a mud air-tunnel to go through. She came out sopping and loving it.

After this, we all headed to the ocean to for a thorough cleaning. Kendra and I went out and rode the waves for an hour...it was fun!!! At first a speedboat raced back and forth, creating waves for all the tourists & visitors. But we could tell when the tide started coming in and then the speedboat stopped. The waves got bigger and were cooler from the deeper ocean water. Our evaluation of the Yellow Sea is that it is 3x saltier than the Pacific Ocean along the Oregon coast. Yeack! The kids also had a lot of fun in the smaller waves close to the shore with John.

Where is SunHwa all this time? She was happy to take us but did NOT want to get dirty! Unfortunately for her, by just sitting around or following us and taking pictures, she got splattered by passing tourists. As we quit the water, we began to meander toward the car, taking in some of the booths & sites. Here's what John found: he looks like he's got peg legs!

Now for the ironic part of it all... ~ ...we paid nothing for admission or any of the activities. What we did have to pay for were the showers to get cleaned up & changed afterwards!!! Seven dollars for all of us. Kendra was wondering why the map showed "showers" and "showers for tourists"...what the difference was? We soon found out! We'd gone to just the regular showers and after paying and going in, found that they were community showers! About a 12-15 shower heads down each side of a narrow(er) shower building. The cement was poured right around trees! And the top was only black netting that we could look up and see the trees limbs overhead. At least, their was a men's room and a ladies' room! Even so, Kendra and I looked at each other and Joy's eyes about bugged. We shot over to the farthest corner and then one of us held up a towel while the other showered and dressed. John said the boys were nearly in shock as well. Since John had noone to hold up a towel, he just showered with his clothes on! After we came out, SunHwa wondered why we were carrying on so about the showers. We explained that in the US, we are accustomed to individual showers and most usually with doors!

Okay, so after successfully "passing" that ordeal, we went in search for food. We didn't have far to look. Kendra noticed something that's actually bigger in Korea...the humongous water bottles!! ~ those are her words exactly! :) (For reference, the small ones are the size of regular water bottles in the US.) John has skewed chicken and we each had a corn dog. Initially the corn dog cost was $2.00. Somehow the price went down "for foreigners" after we hesitated before buying. And then actually, we never even paid for them until after they were eaten. We sat down to eat them and I totally forgot to pay for them. It wasn't till I was nearly finished that I realized we hadn't yet paid and glanced at the lady. She was patiently just sitting on her stool, not looking in the least bit worried. Sometimes, I'm still taken by surprise by the honesty and trust of the Korean people in general.

On our walk back to our car, we saw a new sight...a wild turkey and a couple chickens under a mesh-like tent....mosquito screen for poultry??? And also in the background was a horse...right out there in the open. Good-bye, Mud Festival! We had fun!!

Not 5-8 minutes (again!) after leaving BorYeong, we ran into rain again. We literally had spent the whole day about 5 minutes away from where it was downpouring all day. That amazed us all! It was still raining when he hit SeoSan. Since SunHwa lives in SeoSan, she dropped us off at the bus terminal and we took the bus back home to DaeSan. As we waited for the bus, we noticed that we were royally sunburnt! Since it was raining when we left, we never figured we'd need sunblock. We just thought we'd really be playing in the mud!...and rain! Kendra snapped a picture inside the "cheap" bus. It's a little blurry, but if you can, try to find the handles at the top that people hold on to when the bus gets full. Jesse got booted out of his front seat when more elderly people boarded at a later stop. That was okay since that is the custom of respect here.