Escape from Routine Life with an Experience in Mud

This weekend, the majority of our Gangseo SLP crew packed up our bags and headed about two hours south west Seoul to the biggest party in the country, Boryeong Mud Festival. It is a huge festival that takes place every year to promote tourism and to raise awareness of the skin care properties that the mud near Boryeong Beach is famous for. This year marks the festival's 11th year, and it grows in popularity with each passing year. The festivals slogan for this year was Escape from Routine Life with an Experience in Mud, and that's exactly what we planned to do.

Saturday was our main event, and we planned to look as much like these MudFest Mascots as was humanly possible. I think we did a fairly good job, but so you don't have to take my word for it, here's a little bit of photo evidence.

As far as I'm concerned, that is mission accomplished. Due to the muddy nature of the event, the only pictures that I have of us are once we arrived back at the hotel once everything was all over. Pictures of the actual goings on would have been amazing, but not worth ruining my camera. Some of the other girls had the foresight to bring disposable cameras however, so more pictures will be coming.

Apparently Koreans also thought that we were doing a fairly decent job of covering ourselves in mud, because people were snapping our pictures left, right and center. We were even interviewed on Korean TV!

There was a lot of this to be seen:

As well as a lot of this:

There were mud slides, mud wrestling, mud baths, coloured mud for painting, and even stalls selling beauty products made from mud. We only got to really experience it all on Sunday due to the torrential rains that kept us inside the hotel on Sunday until we could go home, but it was a great weekend experience.

Friends and Coworkers: Lindsay

Lindsay is a patriotic, jolly old soul who hails from Maryland, and loves to give kisses to Janique when she's had a few glasses of soju cocktail. I also love to give kisses to Janique, so I can't say that I blame Lindsay an ounce.

Occasionally, Lindsay also likes to cover herself from head to toe in multi-coloured mud at mud festivals. It may be a more reasonable assessment, that I like to cover Lindsay from head to toe in multi-coloured mud at mud festivals.... I can neither confirm nor deny those rumours.

Most of the time however, Lindsay is just another one of the girls in the office who doesn't really enjoy it when I take out my camera at work, and tell her that its time for her appearance on the Friends and Coworkers segment of my blog. She puts up with me though, and puts on her best face. I think she secretly enjoys the attention! (Don't you Lindsay? I knew it!)

Lindsay is also at least mostly responsible for my continued efforts at the gym since I started going in May. Recently Meghan has been giving us a bit of a boost as well, but Lindsay is the one true original. She is a great girl to have around, and a fabulous addition to the Friends and Coworkers segment of this blog!

See Lindsay, that wasn't so painful now... was it?

Jongmyo Shrine and Gyeongbokgung Palace

On Sunday, the little Amanda and I decided that the day should not be wasted, and so we got our little buns on the subway and headed into the city to take in one of the palaces and a Confucian shrine.

According to Wikipedia, Jongmyo Shrine is a Confucian shrine dedicated to the memorial services for the deceased kings and queens of the Korean Joseon Dynasty. The site is said to the oldest royal Confucian shrine preserved in all of Korea. It has been on the UNESCO World Heritage list since 1995.

Gyeongbokgung Palace was originally constructed during the same year, 1394 by by King Taejo, the first king and founder of the Joseon Dynasty.

Both Jongmyo Shrine and Gyeongbokgung Palace have been heavily damaged by Japanese occupation but as of 2009, have been restored much to their original state.

Its now home to verdant pools, and thousands upon thousands of tourists each year.

Hello Ms. Tourist. How is your touristing going today? Is it all very touristy?

Amanda: I live here, stupid.

Me: Oh, yeah...

I dunno, she looks like a tourist to me...

A traditional Korean throne. Cool.

New angle...

Good bye.

Author's note: Apparently I got bored while writing this post...

Monsters Inc... its real!

Monsters Inc. is real! I know this because I found where the keep the closet doors that they go through in the night time to scare unsuspecting little children. It's in Seoul!

Boy, am I glad now that I didn't really have a closet door when I was a kid, now that the truth is out! Just look at all those closet doors with unsuspecting children behind them. Its a good thing that since the movie came out then monsters have discovered that laughing works way better to power the monster city than screams do! It helps me to sleep easy a night. (Thank goodness I don't have real closet doors here either! -- oh wait... I'm no longer a child, shoot!)

In all reality if you really twist my arm -- ouch, that hurt! I didn't mean it! -- I'm willing to admit that this may not actually be the doors from Monsters Inc. I mean I don't think they would leave them unattended like that in the middle of the city. It's a pretty fabulous impression though. This entire building was covered in doors.

I was in awe. Amanda just laughed at me. How cruel.

I hope one of those monsters uses one of these doors to sneak into her room and tickle her until she turns blue and wets the bed. How do you like them apples, Amanda?

An Independant Haircutting Adventure

Today was Independence day in Seoul and we celebrated with haircuts, shopping, more shopping and going out for dinner to a restaurant in Itaewon that sells American food. It was a great day -- although, not quite as great as Canada day if we're being honest.

Lindsay and I got up bright and early to head to a place called Idae where we both had hair appointments for 10 o'clock. Lindsay laughed at me for not knowing how to get my hair cut, but the rest of you probably aren't at all surprised at my general incompetence in that area.

Here's a picture of my new do!

Aren't I dashingly handsome... erm... beautiful? I'm happy with it, and Lindsay was happy with her new hair, so we headed outside for some celebratory shopping, seeing as we were already in the neighbourhood.

One of the thins we saw was this pattern of dust on a window, that we agreed looked like Abrahan Lincoln or George Washington or some such... we thought it was a fitting sign for independence day, so we took a picture before we headed on our way.

The rest of the day was not incredibly noteworthy. We spent most of it ducking in and out of stores to avoid scattered showers throughout the day, and then joined the other girls in Itaewon for dinner, heading home early, because we were all a little tired. There was a little red, white and blue around, but considering Itaewon is considered foreigner central, I was a little surprised at the lack of festivities there in the evening. I guess everyone was still recovering from their awesome Canada Day celebrations!

Canada Day

Canada Day dawned just like any other Wednesday here in Seoul, and I got up an headed to work just as I do every other day. School was a little interesting, I talked about Canada in a few of my classes and gave out Canada stickers etc. which was kind of fun. Korea is so old, that some of my younger kids struggled with the fact that a country could even have a birthday, but for the most part it went off without a hitch.


In the evening we rustled ourselves up some Canada day tattoos and headed down to the restaurant located in the ground floor of our apartment complex.

We got there a little early and so decided to have a photo shoot while we were waiting for everyone else to show up. The plan was to have a night of Canada based trivia. Everyone showed up, we moved outside onto the patio and the trivia began! Amanda (Florida), Meghan (Ontario) made the winning team: The Crazy Canucks!

Amanda: "What's a Canuck?"

Two of the teams were made up of only Americans, and the other team was Tara and Janique. Needless to say, there wasn't exactly a fair distribution of Canadians. One of the American teams did... um... quite poorly. Surprise, anyone? The other team did quite well, all things considered, and I'm quite proud of them!


All in all, it was a very enjoyable evening during which we celebrated being from the best country on earth, and the Americans and Koreans around us felt a little jealous. I don't hold it against them of course, I would be jealous too!


Interesting story from the evening:

As I mentioned above, while we were waiting for everyone else to arrive at the restaurant, Fish and Grill, the five of us girls, Amanda, Laura, Lindsay, Meghan and Tara had a little photo shoot of all of our Canada Day tattoos and general Canadiana.

We are of course all stunningly beautiful, so you can understand how we would each whip out a camera and start taking pictures. It's a natural progression in the evening of course.

Well, apparently, Tara thought that she was being left out of the photo taking more than was fair, and wanted us to take pictures of her too. She didn't realise until it was too late however, that this would of course involve all of us turning our cameras on her at the exact same moment, each taking multiple pictures -- to make her feel included of course. And also because it was hilariously funny. Here is the result:

Poor girl never knew what hit her. She won't be making that mistake again any time soon. :)

Happy Canada Day!

Happy Canada Day to everyone at home!

I'll post all about our Canada Day festivities when I get home. Hope you are all having a great day off from work!

Love, Me