Mudfest

Last weekend we went to the Boryeong Mud Festival.  Brady and I went with his friends Stefan and Nathan, both of whom he knows from West Virginia, and a couple of their friends.  The Mud Festival takes place at a beach that has mud that, supposedly, has healing properties.  Even when there's not a mudfest, there's a bath house there that uses the mud.  What it seems to turn into, however, is Daytona Spring Break '97.  A bunch of foreigners getting really drunk and making bad decisions (not us, we were pretty low-key.)  I tried to look up the official history of the Mud Festival, and this is what the website says: "Established the Foundation Act is an attempt to achieve viable and that some programs, such as payable holroseogi Boryeong Mud Festival was successful evaluation accepted."  So, there you go.  

There were a lot of events, like mud wrestling and mud sliding, but it was really crowded where those events were happening, so we just slathered ourselves in mud and hung out on the beach.  It started getting rainy and a little cold in the afternoon, so we went back to the hotel and cleaned up, and mostly hung out there for the evening.


One of the disappointing parts of the weekend was the behavior of some of our fellow Americans.  Brady and I live near the Osan Air Force base, so sometimes we see people from the base out.  The first ones we saw were on the train there, drinking heavily at 11am.  I don't care if people are drinking, but they became increasingly loud and obnoxious.  When we got off the train, they immediately took their shirts off and lit up cigarettes.  A Korean man told them, in perfect English "this is a no smoking area," and they responded "smoking area?  This is a smoking area?  You want a cigarette?"  Then started actually chanting "Team America."  And on the way back, we were standing on a crowded train platform and someone started setting off fireworks.  I couldn't tell who it was, but I would guess it was the Americans.  Most of the people I've met from the military base are very nice and respectful, but some of them must have missed whatever cultural sensitivity training the military provides, and it gives us all a bad name, and is really, really disappointing.  They could do so much good here, and put forth such a good impression of our country, but it just takes a couple of douchebags to ruin things.  Arrgh.