This past weekend I headed up to Boryeong, a small town on the west coast of Korea for the 10th annual Mud Festival. Alex and I arrived in the early afternoon to find Sam and the Changwon crew already enjoying themselves and playing in the mud. It wasn't long before Sam poured a bucket of mud on me and pushed me down a giant inflatable slide into a pool of mud at the bottom. This may sound harsh but it was all in the spirit of festival. Also, I got him back twice as good later on. I spent the rest of the day playing in the mud and swimming in the sea. I did some mud wrestling, had a mud race, and enjoyed a mud bath. To make a great situation better, I found a tent with coloured mud in which you could paint yourself blue, red and gold. This was perhaps the most enjoyable part since it allowed us to uniformly show our pride and give a throw-back tribute to Braveheart. The rain began to fall as the sun set and we decided that it would be a good idea to have a sauna so as to clean off and warm up. Afterward we got changed and headed out for some dinner. Alex and I caught up with the Changwon crew once again at a galbi joint not too far from our hotel. We ended up hanging out with a few cool Koreans and Americans for some drinks and dinner. We spent the rest of the night together living it up- enjoying the fireworks and the outdoor concert.
The next day was less than enjoyable. The weather was horrible and our bus decided to leave a few hours early. Of course not everyone got this memo and we were stuck waiting in a parking lot for them to show up nearly an hour late. Once we were rolling things began to return to normal except that it took a little more than eight hours to get back to Busan because of the traffic, weather and frequent stops. Despite this however, I had a deadly time at Mudfest and it should not be missed by any foreigner visiting or living in Korea next July (Jill, I'm talking to you!).