Boryeong Mud Festival 2011

Way back, on a humid weekend in late July, I travelled with some of my old mates from Gwangju-si to the Boryeong Mud Festival. The 14th Boryeong Mud Festival was held at Daecheon Beach in Boryeong city in Chungcheongnam-do, a province on the Western coast of Korea. 

Miss Gwangju 2010

OK time for my first post, Sophie has talked about arriving and our first few days so I'm not going to bother going over that again except to say that after my easy first day my next day was much like Sophie's start i.e. I got put in front of a class and told to get on and start teaching them English. Needless to say that was just a little daunting but it sure does force you to learn fast, there's nothing quite like the thought of being stood in front of 40 screaming kids with nothing to say to get you motivated to learn how to teach.

So last week was my school's English festival, a whole day at the school devoted to the wonders of the English language, really exciting huh? Well it sort of was because it meant I had a whole day of no teaching, yay!

But of course an English festival involves plenty of work for an English teacher so no slacking off for me. First of all I was told I needed to produce some questions for the school "Golden Bell" competition. Golden Bell is a South Korean game show and apparently the format is a load of true or false questions followed by some written answer questions which gradually whittle down the contestants until only one is left. Then maybe the golden bell rings or something like that... It wasn't really explained very clearly to me and the clips I've found don't make much sense.



So anyway my version quickly descended into farce as my co-teachers got me to change the questions midway through (despite them having already OKed them!), revealed the answers, displayed the wrong slides and accepted wrong answers. Because of all that we ended up with too many kids left and I had to come up with more questions on the spot to finish the contest.

As well as the Golden Bell I was told I had to give a presentation on English culture, I wanted to talk about food but this being an all boys school that was vetoed and I was told I should talk about sports. If you know me well you'll know just what a massive sport fan I am and how much I love talking about football etc... I couldn't really be bothered with doing a load of research about the premier league and then pretending to be interested in it so I took a different tack and decided to talk about unusual British sports. My presentation featured conkers, bog snorkeling, hurling and cheese rolling, so if they didn't think the British were mad before they certainly do now.

The next delight of the day was the English pop song contest, oh joy there's nothing quite like the sound of a class of boys in the middle of puberty attempting to murder, sorry sing Westlife songs, my love of Westlife is second only to my love of football. But I was a judge so I sat through song after song of cheesy lyrics, breaking voices and mis-pronunciation doing my best to look attentive and not cover my ears too much and mainly giving marks to the shortest and quietest songs.

After lunch we had the Miss Gwangju 2010 contest, but wait I hear you cry I thought you were at a boys school? Well you're not wrong, the Miss Gwangju 2010 contest was the school drag queen contest! 10 boys from each year dolled up in make up and dresses strutting their stuff on the stage! Not the kind of thing you'd get a British school boy doing in a million years.

The role of host was played very well by a 3rd grade boy with excellent English and the perfect mannerisms for a drag queen contest host, camp as a row of tents and bitchy as hell. Lots of the boys looked awkward and a bit embarrassed but of course there were a few from each year who obviously enjoyed it just a bit too much including one boy who got so into the dancing stage he had to be stopped after spending about a minute gyrating around the stage. I wish I'd brought a camera and got some photos but I only had my phone and they were too far away to get them on that.

The Wonders of E-Mart

An E-Mart was opened in Gwangju shortly before we arrived. E-Mart is kind of like a Walmart style store and although it is evil it does raise our little town up in status from being a one horse town to being a one horse town with a bloody great shop in it - apparently. It's good for cheap clothes and getting Western style foods but not as cheap as our beloved Mega Mart. Also, whenever we go there we seem to spend so long inside that it is always dark when we get out again.

Gwangju's recently opened E-Mart. Bringing civilisation and cheap trainers to the masses.

Rowan and Dean descend into the E-Mart underworld...

'Adult Sunday School Ministry' - just one of the many exciting Konglish (Korean English) t-shirts available for purchase in E-Mart.

Spam is very popular in Korea. Here's Dean with a tin of bacon spam - mmmmm...

Silkworm Pupae also seems to be a popular snack!

Octopus tentacle anyone?

You can get pets at E-Mart too. This is one of the most expensive. It's a miniature hedgehog and was really tiny.I really want one but not at that price.

Don't mix your drinks, especially if one of them is Gorangju, Chinese Fire Water (only 52%).

Fly like paper, get high like, (Peppero) planes! (Peppero is a Korean Chocolate coated biscuit stick snack so popular that Korea has a national Peppero day!)

A Korean style picnic set of Japanese sushi, Kimbap (Korean sushi) and...ham sandwiches.

Busan

Wednesday 2nd June was Election Day in Korea so we got the day off work - wahey! Why don't we get the day off in the UK? It's a great idea! Anyway, Dean convinced us to go down to Busan on Tuesday night after school so we would have Wednesday daytime on the beach and go back Wed evening. I think this turned out to be a slightly ill-advised trip as it took us a hell of a long time to get there. Unfortunately, Gwangju is at least 2 bus rides away + taxi ride to get to the nearest KTX (Korea's high speed 'bullet trains') station and we had to contend with rush hour, holiday traffic so it took over 2 hours just to get to the station! The train journey to Busan then took another 3 hours or so followed by a 30 min taxi ride across Busan to get us near the beach for the following day - ouch! Expensive and time consuming but it was nice to chill out on Haeundae beach on Wednesday! When we told other people we were planning to go to Busan for a day they had seemed surprised - now we know why - it's too far really for a day trip. It's pretty much the other end of the country from where we are! See the map below - we live just east of Seoul near the city marked Songnam. Busan is on the south coast.

The train ride down to Busan was interesting. We had to buy slightly more expensive tickets than we really wanted as those were all that was left. I was really tired and was hoping I would be able to doze off on the train but 5 mins into our journey a big screen was lowered from the ceiling in our carriage and the blinds were all pulled across our windows by KTX staff - so much for seeing something of the Korean countryside. We had ended up in the movie carriage and had little choice but to watch the film as the volume was turned up incredibly loud. Just to add to the weirdness, it was a Japanese film set partly in Korea. The only bits of the film we really understood were 'Do you speak Englishee?' as everything else was either in Japanese or Korean. Still it was pretty entertaining trying to work out what the hell was going on! Film was called Tokyo Taxi if anyone's interested. I think it followed the journey of a Japanese indie star who seemed to be getting a taxi from Tokyo to Korea (or something like that!) and the adventures he and his taxi driver had along the way including the start and sudden inexplicable end of what appeared to be World War 3. Like a kind of Asian Odyssey, but in a taxi.

Do you speak Englishee?

Anyway, we finally got to Busan and found a cheap motel for the night and were refreshed and ready to go the next morning. We spent pretty much the whole day on Haeundae beach, South Korea's most famous and most popular beach. It was a really hot day and we went swimming though the sea was still pretty cold to be honest. I think us Brits stood out as we were in shorts and t-shirts - Koreans don't generally like to get a tan as in the past getting a tan was linked to being a poor person who had to work outside all day. Because of this, most Koreans we saw at the beach were wearing lots of clothes, carrying parasols (or sun umbrellas as they seem to call them) and some were wearing face masks! We even saw one lady lying on the beach with a towel over her face to avoid the sunshine - don't why she didn't just stay inside! Most of the Koreans we saw swimming in the sea swam with all their clothes on too which was quite an amusing sight. One little girl was trying to play with her friends in the shallows with her little dress billowing out around her.

There was a sand sculpture festival planned for that weekend and we saw some of the entries being prepared with heavy moving equipment and scaffolding!

Building sandcastles with scaffolding

A sand Eiffel Tower

And a sandy Statue of Liberty

We didn't have time to explore much of Busan other than the beach but we did have a look round China/Russia Town, an area near the KTX station with various ethnic restaurants, clubs, shops and brothels of course. We can read the Russian alphabet and it was surprisingly comforting to be able to read shop signs for a change! The train journey home was a lot more normal than the one to Busan had been. I was able to take some photos out of the window of the passing countryside of Gyeongsamnamdo. the province surrounding Busan in the SE corner of Korea.

Pictures through the train window

Rice paddies from the KTX window

We finally got home about 11pm after having to catch a taxi from the station to save some time. Overall a fun trip and we will definitely go back to Busan again but maybe for a long weekend next time!