Chapter 41: "Let's Give Them Something To Talk About"

"Something to talk about" being my ghastly sunburn, left over from this past weekend at the Mud Festival. I was only out in the sun for about 2 1/2 hours, and I was walking around with clothes on (i.e. not swimming or sitting around in my bathing suit) for half that time! Anyways, it's reminiscent of the great French Riviera Sun Poisoning of Easter 2006, and indeed possibly the Roasting which occurred at Madagorda Island in 1996. I don't usually get burned on my knuckles -_- Thank goodness I didn't buy one of those ridiculous reflective mats for sunbathing, right now my skin does not appreciate me.

Anyways, at school today all my students gawked and laughed at me. Even the teachers laughed at me. One couldn't stop laughing, so I had to hold a piece of paper in front of my face when I talked to her. Still, it's not as bad as one of my coworker's. When he got sunburned last week, his eyes were swollen shut.

I would post a pic of my new soon-to-be tanlines, but my mom reads this blog, and she hates it when I burn, and she'll be angry with me :-( (sorry mommy!)

Meanwhile, the Mud Festival was quite fun! It takes a little bit of daring to be able to cover yourself with mud and let other people wipe it on you and give you big muddy hugs. Once your clothing is filthy and you can't get any dirtier, it's really fun :-) Our bus ride there was ridiculously long, because a bunch of people on the bus were drinking, and needed to use the john a lot, so we had to stop every hour. Also, they smoked, so they needed their nicotine fixes as well. But it turns out that Korean truck stops are like 100x better than American truck stops. They aren't seedy at all; on the contrary, they're popular stops for buses and they have fresh food and ice cream and nice places to sit and admire the middle-of-nowhere scenery. I can't believe how much I love Korean food.

Our "hotel" was scary; the only thing that would've made it scarier would be varmints. We had to sleep on the floor, the air conditioning was touch-and-go, there was a plague of mosquitos the size of birds, and a shortage of blankets. And no shower. Go to a mud festival, and come back to a hotel lacking showers. I just dare you to. The "shower" was a spigot in the bathroom that tricked ice-cold water. To wash oneself, one had to fill a bucket with this icy water and pour it on oneself. One was not pleased (or completely clean) when one was done.

I spent the night squished between two other people, and at least 4 people in the room snored. But the couple who owned the place were extremely friendly and helpful, so we couldn't exactly get mad at them for the setup. They barbecued for us, and that was tasty as well. The advantage to foreigners here is that pretty much none of us are the prissy types. How can we be? We have to completely change lifestyles to live here, and a lot of us are the nomadic backpackers one sees in Europe/Asia/Australia....

Sunday was relaxing for the most part, in that we got to just putz around the beach/mud area for a couple of hours. I ate a double-fried corn dog, which was a special experience with no negative after-effects besides getting ketchup on my towel. The water temperature was perfect, the beach was beautiful, and there were lots of foreigners there to talk to. I even had the hopefully once-in-a-lifetime chance to shower in a community shower. I paid $2 to stand in with a bunch of stark-naked old Korean women and spray myself (again) with freezing cold water. But it felt so good to FINALLY get the rest of the crusty sand and mud off me that I didn't care.

The ride home was boring and gross because they were playing Arrested Development, and it was making me motion sick. It also took ages to get home, even if we only stopped once, because the bus driver was driving uber-slow.

Tomorrow we have a random vacation, which is nice, if not a bit inconveniently-placed. Why the Korean holidays come in the middle of the week, I just don't know.