It's technically Jesse's week to write the blog but he's been so busy trying to plan his summer camp that it's taking up every free second he has so I'm going to do it.
This week was a bit dramatic at my school. One of my friends, Alida - the South African opera singer - spanked a kid once on the bum and drew an 'X' in his book because he was spitting on his friends and not listening or doing his work. Anyway, the parents complained and she was fired so it was all very intense around the workplace. I'm sad she's leaving because she was really cool and because it's going to involve a lot more overtime and work for everyone else. Reg - my boss - has already asked me to take over her class of eight 3-year olds, which will be a little exhausting.
On Friday my kids went on a field trip to Carribean Bay, a huge water park about an hour away. Unfortunately, it was pouring rain (an unsurprising consequence of planning field trips in monsoon season) so the kids spent most of the trip shivering or playing in a boring indoor wading pool.
This weekend was a big one. Saturday morning we woke up at 4am and ran to the subway, took a 1.5 hour subway trip to the bus terminal, and then a 2.5 hour bus ride to a city called Boeryeong in Chungcheongnam province, on the West coast of Korea. MudFest is an annual festival and is, by far, Korea's most famous festival. Everyone we'd talked to who had been previously said it was the greatest thing they did while in Korea so we were very excited.
We all piled out of the bus in our swimsuits only to find that it was torrential rain and the first day under 25 degrees we've had in months. We were shivering and soaked within seconds and beginning to really wonder why the heck we were there.
Us in the pouring rain, soaked and freezing.
Eventually, the rain stopped and we spent the afternoon meeting up with friends, losing friends in the crowd, and playing mud games. We played in this massive mud wrestling pit, went on massive mud slides, and played this game where you had to run on slippery muddy plastic with a bungee cord tied around your waist. It was lots of fun.
One of the mud wrestling pits.
Afterwards, we washed off in the ocean, which was probably the best part of the weekend. The waves were gigantic and absolutely pounded you. It was so much fun but we were both battered and exhausted after a few hours in there.
Me playing in one of the smaller waves.
After that we went back to our hotel, showered and changed, and met up with our friends at a seafood restaurant for dinner. After dinner there were fireworks and beach parties and concerts. We saw Super Junior, one of Korea's most famous pop bands play, which was very exciting. Korea is still very in to the boy/girl groups and their Spice Girls equivalent is a 9-girl group called Girls Generation and their Backstreet Boys equivalent is Super Junior. Saturday night was lots of fun but we went to bed pretty early because it had been a long and exhausting day.
The hotel rooms slept 9-15 people - just on the hardwood floor with a blanket and pillow - but, surprisingly, we both slept fantastically. I think we were both so tired.
Sunday we woke up early and had some breakfast burritos and were thrilled to see the sun was shining and it was very hot. We headed for the ocean right away because it was so much fun the day before but the waves were much smaller so we went and got painted with mud instead. We spent the day watching concerts and chatting with our friends on the beach and, when we finally washed all the mud off, found we had sunburns that were splotchy and polka-dotted from the clay - not the most attractive look. We got on the bust home around 4pm and arrived back at our house around 9.
My friend Jennelle and I very muddy.
Jesse also very muddy.
The main beach.
We're gearing up for another week and are excited to head to Japan in 10 days!
Miss you all,
Ali
