I know right about now you are asking yourself, what the hell is river bugging? This was the essential question that I was asking the night before I did it. River bugging is basically a special way of tubing. You are given an individual raft that you float down the river in. BUT you are wearing a full wet suit, life jacket, helmet flippers, and these strange webbed gloves. The idea of course being that their webbedness will help you paddle and move faster. It's basically an opportunity for you to pretend that you are a water skipper.
I went with a group of friends, most of who are South African. It took us three different buses to finally arrive at this place, but once we got there it was totally worth it. The water was gorgeous and river bugging is a lot of fun! We of course got a quick lesson on how to be a river bug. Most of which was retarded common sense water knowledge. They literally told us that if your face is in the water you need to turn over so it's out of the water. Then, they made use practice this. They also told us that we should not hit our heads on the rocks. The only useful part of the training was when they made us purposefully capsize our river bugs and then get out from underneath it.
All in all I was a fairly good river bugger! I did capsize once in a particularly rugged part of the river and it took me an unpleasantly long amount of time to get myself righted, but I lived to tell the tale! I had a blast and will hopefully go again next year!
This is not a video of my group, but it still gives you an idea of what we did!
The lovely river and the red school bus we rode in.
River bugs and the webbed gloves!
The beginning of our lesson.
Still learning...we're almost in the water!
The person in front is practicing how not to drown. Oh yeah... you don't leave your face submerged in water until you run out of air!
Throughout the year there are different festivals all over Korea. One that is especially popular among ex-pats is Mudfestival. It was started to promote the mud in Boryeong, which is suppose to be very rejuvenating for your skin, but it has since evolved. I had heard so many awesome stories about it so I decided to go this year. Unfortunately I got a cold the week of the festival so I was a little under the weather.
We took a train from Suwon down to Boryeong, it only took about two and a half hours. I went with a big group of friends that I met at a foreign bar in Suwon. We stayed at a minkbak, which is basically a large room with very little furniture in it. They provide you with sleeping mats, blankets and pillows. It's pretty much the cheapest accommodation you can get for a large group of people. Once we put our stuff down and got our swim suits on we headed down to the beach.
The very second we set foot on the beach it started raining. This proved tragic because it rinsed off all of my sunscreen. We walked along the beach for quite a while in the rain and luckily it eventually stopped raining. Once we reached the festival there were SO many people there. We found a spot to set up our headquarters and settled in for the ride. They had these big sinks with mirrors that were filled with mud. They had paint brushes attached to them so that you could paint the mud on yourself and your friends. However, more often than not people were scooping up the mud and throwing it on each other! After we got all muddy we would go and drink some more soju and then go for a swim in the ocean to rinse ourselves off. This was pretty much the cycle for the day... First we drank, second we covered ourselves in mud and third rinse (in the ocean) and repeat! It was really fun even though I felt like crap. They also had a big area where you could go down mudslides and do mud wrestling other activities. Unfortunately I was too sick to partake in that. That night a group of us had some delicious Korean barbecue and then we watched fireworks shot off over the ocean. It was a great day!
Before
After Soju-gatorade (hence the blue tongues) but before mud
AFTER!
LOBSTER!!!
This was me the day after. Sick as hell and wickedly sunburnt. So not my day.
It's monsoon season in South Korea. It actually sounds a lot worse than it has been so far. It however, is POURING right now. I am very glad that I put on my rainboots before I made the two block journey to the PC bang (internet cafe). It is a little strange that it rains so much during the summer here, especially since back home it is SO hot right now. I am definitely jealous of all my friends that are hanging out at Whiskeytown lake right about now. Unfortunately when it rains here it just makes it more humid. The humidity hasn't been that bad yet, but apparently it is going to get worse. So far my hair is hating the humidity, but the rest of me is dealing just fine.
I have been very sad lately, I think mainly because it is really hard not having internet in my apartment. It has been four weeks since I have been able to Skype with anyone from back home. I have always been so independent so it is weird that this bothers me. I just would really like to hear my mom's voice or to talk to my sister or a friend for a little bit. I will hopefully be able to purchase a new computer about two weeks from now and then hopefully my mood will improve.
I've made some friends here, but as of yet no super good ones. The two other teachers that I flew out of San Francisco with are now best friends, which is nice for them. The other new teacher is all buddy buddy with another teacher and I feel very left out. I am trying to be patient and I am doing my best to make some good friends, but so far no luck. I think I am just having a bad day and hopefully by tomorrow things will be looking up!
The title pretty much sums up this post. I got paid for the first time today since I've been here. Considering it has been over a month I am pretty psyched! I'm going out with some co-workers tonight to celebrate and tomorrow I will be going to Homeplus to buy a mattress pad. Ahhh a soft mattress will be such a treat!
Suwon is home to the world cup soccer stadium where, go figure, the world cup was played a few years back. Suwon's team is called the Bluewings. I have never been to a soccer game in my life, but all of my friends were going so I decided to tag along. I only know the very basics about soccer, but it was still a ton of fun! People were waving flags and there was a lot of chanting and singing. I managed to learn a few words to some of the chants. I mostly just learned the vowels though. I had those "Oooooos" down! Oddly enough there was actually a live band there that was playing during the entire game to get the crowd pumped up. They played a lot of Beatles songs, but of course the lyrics were in Korean. It was still freaking awesome though!
The only disappointing part was that I was starving and the food options really sucked. One of my favorite things about going to sporting events back home is all the delicious food that is available. I was really missing AT&T Park's delicious hot dogs and garlic fries. At the soccer match my food options were just different types of chips. On the bright side the chips and beer they were selling were very cheap. I had a really good time and will definitely see a few more games during my time here.
Oh! I of course almost forgot the most important part. The Bluewings won! It was pretty exciting, because apparently they are actually a terrible team and rarely win. So yay! Losing my soccer game virginity was a success!!!
Action shot!
Check out the flags. I have no idea why there was a flag with Che Guevara's face on it. The Koreans are strange like that.
Also a French flag was flying. My only explanation for that is that those are also the Bluewing's colors.
