Mudfest

Well ive had a couple of days to sober up, rest my vocal chords and reflect on one awesome bloody weekend. The weekend was "Mudfest", which is pretty much exactly as it sounds - ie, a Festival of Mud. It was held in Boryeong, about a 3.5 hour drive from Jinju on, which is on the coast. Location here;


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It is a holiday town situated on the beach and a whole bunch of activities and events are held along the beach and just off the sand. The beach ends up looking a little bit like Full Moon Festival in Thailand - a massive strip of sand covered in garbage, thousands of drunken lunatics and leading to an ocean that cannot possibly have clean water. I would have to guess that around 5 to 6 thousand people were in attendance; most being expat teachers, a few young families enjoying the beach (why oh why would you bring your children anywhere near this drunken and debaucherous mass of humanity), and quite a few US army guys. Theres no bigger meatheads on Earth than these dudes. Everyone will be having fun until these guys come within a 20 metre radius and immediately kill everyones buzz. Don't even think about talking to a girl if these guys can see you, their unnatural amounts of testosterone will have have a massive issue with it. In fact, don't even bother looking at them, because thats means you are challenging their alpha dog status and something will need to be done. Other than this unpleasentness it was an amazing weekend that went as follows;

- Met at 9 pm in Jinju to catch the bus in Monsoonal conditions. We didnt have to actually go to mudfest at this point because we were already at a mudfest. Absolutely soaked to the bone before I got on the bus. Things heated up rather quickly though as I was revealed we were on a "Noraebus" - literally "Singing Bus" - and after a few beverages to loosen everyone up, we had that thing rocking. I went 3rd with Bon Jovi's "Livin on a Prayer". I sing, especially the verses, in a very very Aussie accent, which even I can hear through the speakers. So my first 30 seconds drew rapturous laughter from everyone as I was waiting for the chorus. Once I could breakout and actually sing things got better, and my dancing and acting provides a good distraction to my voice as well. Once I was done I got a few "Peter Garrett" jokes. Good stuff. After a few more songs me and the Aussie girl gave our rendition of "Land Down Under" which was accompanied by my faux flute playing (or whatever instrument is used in that song). After this I was established as the star of the Noraebus. At one of the many breaks we took on the way, someone foolishly suggested a foot race while we waited for everyone. Bad choice by them. Kicked their ARSE! The rest of the trip was punctuated by more singing, drinking and increased dancing in the aisles. There is no way in hell this would be allowed in Australia - it was loud, dangerous, drunken and crazy in that bus. Heck, in Australia you are supposed to weat seatbelts in the bus! By the time we had arrived I was already satisfied with my weekend, as I had just had the most enjoyable bus trip of my life, and I didnt think it could really get any better. The only downside about the bus ride was none of the stops along the way served alcohol. I actually think it would have been safer if the bus driver drove when pissed and on drugs then drive with us hooting and holering in the aisles.

-The flute section of "Land Down Under"

- And the crowd is loving it!!

- Once we got the Boryeong - at 1.00 - we dropped our stuff into our "Pension" - our hotel. We had about 40 people staying in 5 rooms. Floorspace only. Made for sore necks in the morning. Apparently 80 people have stayed in that pension before - they must have fit 20 in the bathrooms for that too work. After dropping our stuff off we went down to the beach. I wasnt prepared was swimming when everyone started running into the water, but I was drunk and wanted to swim, so off with the jean shorts and into the water in my undies it was. Believe me, after seeing what some people still wear to the beach these days, wearing underpants (and the long boxer brief style ones) was more then acceptable. I thought only 50 year old men wear budgie smugglers anymore. Obviously not. Anyway I frolicked around my undies for an hour on the beach at 2 in the morning. There will be no photos of this. Wait, why am I telling you this???

- The next day we went to the actual mudfest which was actually quite fun. It was basically a collection of "rides" or "games" that were played in/on blow up things. Like a jumping castle. But instead of a jumping castle there was the bungy - where you strapped yourself into your bungy across from someone, then you both ran to the centre until you bungy became too tight and flings you back to where u came - the climb - where you "rock climbed" (but not as steep) to the top of a mountain and then threw your self down the slide at the end - the race - which was an obstacle course where you raced 4 friends at a time - and the pits - where you basically just wrestled people in the mud. This was the tailor made for the army wanks to flex their muscles (literally), beat up on unsuspecting "weaklings" and show how much they love themselves. If you managed to be in there when they werent, it was actually alot of fun. There was also artistic mud which came in cool colours that would stick on you and you could make cool designs, a stage area where there was a bit of live music, and an impromptu mud fight. This was actually quite funny because this was not a designated area for mudfighting. It was supposed to be a "mud sculptor" area, but no one who went there could actually remember seeing any mud sculptures. This is because they were being used as shields and ammunition and no one had time to look around and admire them. There was two teams about 10/15 metres from each other just hurling balls of mud at each other. One team was using the sculptures as protection and the other was using cars as protection. This was definately not supposed to be happening. It was a fair way away from most of the action - near the car park in fact - and this is the reason why cars were being absolutely bombed. It would have sucked being the owner of one of the cars because they were completely brown by the time it was broken up. I dont know how long it lasted for but if was fun while it lasted and made better by the fact that it was completley organic. I think someone must have just shouted out "MUDFIGHT!!!!" and everyone followed through.

- Part of our crew; the flag is the Jinju flag

- Our impromptu "Soju Bucket". Yes, its a rice machine.

- I was completely worn out by about 5 or 6 in the arvo thanks to little sleep and a massive day so I passed out when i got back to the hotel. I was back up a few hours later and we enjoyed the night life, however by this point i was running on fumes and pretty happy with my weekend already. There was a concert held during the early part of the night which featured typical Korean entertainment - 60 year old guys singing karaoke style, teeny bopping young Korean girl singing, and a DJ. All in all, totally cheezey and hard to listen to or enjoy, but 100% authentic Korean. After this most went to a club but I decided I didnt want to be death stared by a bunch of army kooks and just drank on the beach. Ended up being an earlyish night.

- Received some sun on the last day as we sat on the beach waiting for our bus to leave. As it turns out, it was good that it wasnt sunny on the saturday otherwise id still be burnt. The clouds turned out to be a blessing. I mean, we were wet in mud all day, getting rained on isnt really an issue is it? I took my first photos of the weekend, the noraebus notwithstanding (where I took 200), but didnt really capture what mudfest was about. But I did get some damn fine shots of everyone singing. On the bus home there was more singing too top off probably the biggest weekend since ive been here.


Looking up and down the beach; doesnt really give a good idea how big the event was and how many people were there. It was sunday morning so im sure many were still sleeping. Most of the action was in the direction of the second photo, but it is just out of view.

SKWOZZI SKWOZZI SKWOZZI, OI OI OI!!!!

Another awesome week in Jinju:

- Yesterday went on a drive to Namhae Island with Mr. Lee, one of my Co-teachers. The students had exams so finished the day early and so we had an early day as well. Since the staff were having a welcoming party for a new member at 5:30, Mr Lee wanted to take me for a drive somewhere and then meet the staff for dinner. The original plan was to go to a massive temple in the mountains about 1.5 hours away. Mr. Lee is Buddhist so he visits big temples often and has talked to me about going to visit some for quite some time. Unfortunately we didnt get out early enough to go their so we went to Namhae instead, which is quite closer. I didnt have my camera on me so I cant show u any photos from the trip. Mr. Lee did bring the school camera with him and took photos but insisted I be in everyone. This might have been ok if he didnt zoom in on me every photo. Each one is me engulfing the image with my squinted and schrunched face. No backgrounds. Just me. So that was a bummer. It was a nice little drive, but we didnt go too far on the Island, basically just reached it, drove over the nice and shiny new bridge and came back.

The highlight of the day was going to the dinner afterwards. We went to a pork BBQ place which is just about the best news possible. We ate "Samgyeopsal" which is basically thick, thick bacon. You chuck it on the grill, then cut it into bit sized pieces with scissors, and eat it by placing it onto a lettuce leave and adding whatever else you want on top, for example, special sauce, kimchi, beansprouts, onions, garlic, rice. I think I can eat up to half my entire body weight in Samgyeopsal. I literally wont stop eating it until its all gone. I basically finished off all what the ladies didnt eat as well as the scraps from the other mens grill. I was an absolute machine. It took about 90 minutes to get through the bacon - people were enjoying drinking, and you need time to cook the new batch of bacon (but it is continuously being updated, theres always some fresh stuff to eat and another leg being prepared) - and I was absolutely stuffed. So I was quite amused when Mr. Lee asked me, "Jacob, what would you like for Dinner?". My reply was, "ahhh, I though we just ate dinner". But no, dinner, technically, has to include rice or noodles. So after an hour and a half of non-stop eating I tucked into my proper dinner, rice with a crab soup. So the food was excellent and I ended up putting more of it into my mouth than ever before. We also drank like crazy - Mr. Lee asked me not to drink my Soju in "one-shot", to go half at once. Now I dont drink it in "one-shot" to try to impress people or to get drunk. I do it because I dont want to sip on it and taste its flavour. So I reluctantly obeyed his request. I decided id drink some beer as well so some of the male teachers decided it was time for "so-baek" - basically a beer with a shot of soju in it. These were actually really nice and continued with these until we left the resturant, 2 hours after we entered.

(not my photos below, but this is Samgyeopsal)



The men continued on to a bar after the resturant were more drinking ensued. Just beer from this point but after an hour I honestly felt like I was gonna explode. I had eaten so much, and drank so much I didnt think I was able to contain it. And not by puking, but by my stomach literally splitting open. The fruit trays and beers just didnt seem to end. Everytime i thought, 'OK, this will be the last one surely', another 4 beers would come out. I certainly wasnt going to say no, but I was amazed by how much these guys drank. The only thing I didnt like to see come out was the dried and pressed squid which is a popular bar food in Korea. It is exactly how I described it - a whole squid, dried and pressed - and unfortunately, tastes as good as it sounds. It was really good to socialise with the teachers outside of class - it loosened them up and they started speaking english to me which I had barely heard from them before. I also think they were fairly impressed with my drinking ability so it endeared me to them as well. We talked about all the regular stuff guys do - sometimes with the help of Mr. Lee and it was just a great, fun night. The old Korean female owner was hitting on me bigtime as well, with no shame whatsoever, so that was good for a laugh as well. At 11.30 we left, so, when it was all said and done, I had 6 straight hours of boozing and eating, and didnt pay a cent. Felt great in the morning too.

- My school in Daegok has a vegetable garden and are continuously growing about4 or 5 veges at the same time. The staff really enjoy taking care of it and making use of it - they are always sorting through freshly picked stuff in the staffroom. They often has more than enough to go around so sometimes I get to enjoy in the benefits as well. Last week I got a nice big bag of potatoes the other day, which was very nice and they are excellent quality. So I was quite happy with that. However, on the Friday, Ms. Nam realised that she forgot to tell me not to come in to school that day (because of student exams). So to give me something to do, and not make me just walk straight back out the door and go home, so made me pick vegetables from the garden. I went out there with a couple of teachers and picked some cucumbers and green peppers. Now, they look like chillies but are large and arent hot. They are very common in resturants and quite tasty, but you typically have them with a special sauce. There was millions of green peppers around, so we all picked until our hearts content. I was thinking that I was just helping the harvest. But no, these we for me, I came to realise. So, there I stood, with a plastic bag full of green peppers. "What the hell am I going to do with these?" was all I could think of, and ive repeated this question on a nearly hourly basis since they came into my possession. Trading them for some more potatoes would be ideal. Or maybe I can join the old ladies that sell produce in the street markets. Either way, Im still wondering what to do with them - they are currently in the fridge and untouched since last friday. Any suggestions?



- Last but certainly not least; the 2 greatest words known to Man - BEER OLYMPICS!!!!

Ive never competed in a beer olympics before but I knew that im an Aussie, and if theres one race on Earth that should be good at drinking beer and playing sports at the same time, its us. My anticipation for it was off the charts. For weeks I couldnt wait for it to start. Finally the day came. We started by making our costumes. Unfortunaltely, due to lack of numbers the Aussies had to join with the Kiwis, but we made our costumes unique to each country. There wasnt going to be any wearing of kiwis on my part and they certainly werent going to wear a southern cross that didnt have a red outline or 5 stars so we kept things seperate, but united to take down the rest of the world. It was necessary the we join because there is only 4 kiwis, but more importantly, there is only 2 Aussies, and Lee doesnt drink beer. So basically, the Aussies were a one man team. Realistically I think I could have won the entire thing by myself, but there were some games that required more than one person, so I couldnt get around that. My costume was the product of spray paint, and face paint, and the hat was certousy of Lee. I certainly wouldnt have been able to pull it off. We definately had the best costumes of anyone and nicknamed ourselves the "KWOZZIES".




Events that were held;

-Flippy cup
-Hoola Hoop relay
-3 Legged race
-dizzy race
-carry race
-Egg toss
-100 sprint
-200m relay
-chug

Teams competeing;

-Kwozzies (which later turned to "Skwozzies" or tri-nations when the South Africans joined our team)
- UK
- US
- Korea (Even though nearly no one was actually korean - mostly Yanks as they had the most people)

Shouldnt be too hard to figure out who lost - yep the Koreans. Unfortunately the real Koreans that competed were mostly girls or unathletic, so they couldnt drink and couldnt compete at anything. The yanks that were chucked on their team were pretty retarded too. They would fall over twice in the 3 legged race or break the hoola hoop, basically they couldnt do anything right. Next were the UK. They have a few solid drinkers on the team but for some reason couldnt get it done. Well, they were just beaten by better teams. 2nd was the Sqwazzies. Led, I might add, by One Jacob Roberts, WINNER of the 100M dash and anchor for the WINNING relay team. That alone should be enough means to be MVP of the tournament. I didnt do too good at the dizzy race, flppy cup, or the carry race, but I did essentially win 2 events outright, so, heck, I think thats worth something. Left quite an impression on the spectators with my display of speed. I also think I deserve MVP honours because of my display of team spirit - if i hadnt heard a cry of "Skwozzy Skwozzy Skwozzy!" in about 2 minutes I was right there to give another one. I also broke out into songs and dances of "I come from a land down under", "Tie me kangaroo down sport" and "Waltzing Matilda" whenever I felt appropriate- which turned out to be pretty darn often. I dont need to tell u who won but I will say the scorekeeper was also from that country and im a little suspicious as to his scorekeeping methods. Either way the sqwazzies can hold their heads high, knowing they represented their country they way it should be. All in all an absolutely fantastic night. The kind of night that you dont really want to end. Friendly, and not so friendly, cross country banter, drinking, joking, competing, dressing up and scaring the locals. Doesnt get much better then that.




- Lastly here is a couple of cool pictures from the Herbal Medicene Temple that I visited a few weeks ago as part of the cultural day.