The Honeymoon's Over

At the conclusion of a tiring yet fulfilling day in Seoul, I returned home last weekend, exhausted and a bit dizzy with the realization that yet another week had passed since my arrival in Seosan. Things have been going so smoothly, I proclaimed to myself. I feel happy to be here. Happy to be teaching here, living here. Happy to have the autonomy and wherewithal to take off on a day or weekend trip by my little ol’ self and “see the world” (thanks George Bailey – that was an “It’s a Wonderful Life” allusion for those of you not related to my awesome, movie-quoting family.)

And yet, as things always seem to have a way of doing, barely 24 hours after uttering these simple words, the bottom dropped right out from under me. It all started on Monday afternoon when my coworker Christine enlightened me with the fact that we were entering the “busy season” at our hagwon (private school). This week we needed to prepare the written exams for all of our classes, next week administer them, and the week following, grade them and write up report cards with comments for all 120 of our students. And before I could even exhale, she informed that this cycle would repeat itself again two months later, and two months later, and two months later again. (And I was feeling pretty sorry for myself until I found out that the previous teacher experienced this whole assessment insanity every single month!)

My jaw started to gravitate towards the floor at the realization that this was no small thing. I have fifteen classes, only two of which overlap in curriculum, and writing up exams to match classroom instruction alone would take, I knew, more than a little midnight oil. But there was no wisdom in ignoring it. Denial was only gonna dig me in deeper. So that very night, I started drafting up multiple choice and true/false and fill-in-the-blank and matching and oral dictation questions for one class, and then another. (Yes, I know, I can be a bit OC about whatever it is I wrap my head around doing… why should this be any exception?)

So a week ago yesterday, I had worked a full day at school, gotten home at 8:30 PM, and put in another 5 hours on the test-writing project. Wednesday night, I was hitting the books until 2:30 AM. By Thursday night I was dragging, but I knew with Mud Festival on the wings (and standing plans to leave either Friday night or Saturday morning with Penny, Francois and Chetty) for Daecheon Beach, I had better try to get as far along as I could. I managed to squeeze out another late night Thursday and even an hour or two on Friday after work before meeting up with “the gang.” I was 90% finished, but was seeing fill-in-the-blanks in my sleep, and knew the best medicine was to just take the weekend off!

Enter Mud Festival. (I’ll write-up about this one separately, so check for it later this week!) I’ll just be really brief for the moment and say that some R&R, great company, quality conversation, and some in-depth pillow time was just what I needed to be ready to face work again on Monday.

If only! I found out Monday that a new class (which I admittedly had been contracted for, so no surprise there) was going to be added to my plate – a “kindy” class, with zero-proficiency students. After just finishing a hellishly long workweek, it wasn’t exactly a sugarpill to get that little memo. But it didn’t end there. The drama kicked up a notch with a lot of junk that I also won’t go into, only to say that my boss and I had a bit of a “difference of opinion” when he presented me with an unexpected change to my contract schedule. Trying to navigate through the layers of cultural nuances without making a complete ass of myself proved to be, at the outset, more of a failure than a success. But two days, some fitful sleep, and a good cry session later, I’m feeling like things are back to good.

And then, tonight... Wow, I’ve got a horror story that just takes the take. Maybe I’m just overreacting a bit because I’m a single woman and I live alone and I’ve had more than my fair share of exchanges with creepy men. But I swear, that old saying “When it rains, it pours” couldn’t be more accurate.

Finally tonight, with all of my exams printed and copied and ready for tomorrow, I decided to take a little time off this evening and start to do some planning for my upcoming vacation. (My school closes during the week of August 4^th, which means I’ve got a week to do some traveling). So I settled in at my desk in a strappy black tank and short shorts, trying to keep up with the heat and humidity that’s been building relentlessly from one day to the next. My head bobbed back and forth between my computer screen and my Lonely Planet Korea book as I searched travel blogs and flickr photos and then cross-referenced places in my travel “bible.”

Seosan had a nasty day of rain today, with the tail end of the typhoon spinning up from Japan hitting us around lunchtime, and bringing down pouring rain for the rest of the afternoon and into the evening. So uncharacteristically, the sliding glass door to my balcony had been shut all evening. And I was rather enjoying being all “holed up” and just relaxing into the rhythm of researching for my week of freedom. But as luck would have it, relaxing was not exactly on the agenda for me.

As I continued my reading, my concentration kept breaking with the sound of a repetitious whistle outside my balcony window. It was dark outside, but my blinds were “closed” and my bedroom ceiling light was on, so there was no seeing out. (Eerily, it is entirely possible to see IN to my bedroom, as my blinds don’t seem to shut entirely, something I learned after experimentally “stalking” my own apartment last week. The fishbowl factor is terrible; I feel totally exposed most of the time I am in my apartment.) I kept working. The whistling continued, and it was apparent to me that it was more than just some random whistling outside my window. You know how you just have that sense sometimes that something is directed at you, even when you don’t exactly have any circumstantial evidence to prove it? Something in your gut just seems to know. Inner wisdom, I guess.

This was definitely a male voice, and my insides were all signaling me that this person had me on his radar. The whistling went on for over an hour, a series of calls followed by a few minutes of silence, before the whistles would resurface from the silence again. The longer it went on, the more bothered I became, but I figured the best thing for me to do would be to ignore it. At this point in time, if whoever was standing out there got some kind of a reaction from me, then there’s no telling IF they’d ever go away tonight, right? Finally, it seemed the whistling stopped. Relieved, I kept at my reading.

It wasn’t but a few minutes later that I had the shock of my life. Sitting at my desk, which is at the far end of the same wall as my front door, I thought I heard something, a faint noise. I glanced across the room to the door and couldn’t tell exactly, but it seemed as though my doorknob might have moved. Just typing this now is making my skin seriously crawl.

….

Weeks ago, when I first moved in to the place, I started a little habit of flipping the safety latch over the door after coming home. You live alone, it’s smart to take precautions, I suppose. It doesn’t matter that South Korea is reportedly one of the safest nations in the world. The latch is like one of those old-fashioned chains that I remember from apartments as a young girl. The end of the chain slides into a clasp on the door facing, allows the door to be opened only a few inches, until the chain is pulled taut. I usually like to err on the side of caution, so I didn’t think anything more of my safety habit. I never imagined that those few inches would be what saved me from an unwanted intruder minutes after midnight on a random Wednesday in the middle of small-country Seosan.

….

So, I thought I heard a noise, and popped off of my chair to check things out and put my mind at ease. I HAD locked the door, right? It was then that I realized that someone (who I could only purport to the whistling prowler) had helped himself in to my apartment complex, had sneakily turned the doorknob to my room, and had succeeded in opening my front door without my even knowing it. As I stepped closer to the doorway and saw the gaping 5-inch gap, large enough for someone to put their hand through, I was overtaken with rage, fear, vulnerability, incredulity, all in the same moment. I could feel the adrenaline, my fight response, burgeoning up from that powerful reserve within me that has sprung into action on those rare occasions when my safety has been threatened. And I yelled – top-of-the-lungs yelling, mind you – to the S.O.B., wherever he was hiding, who tried to walk right into my apartment. My stomach literally flipped at the thought that, had I failed to chain my door after coming home from work tonight, my situation could have been far, far worse.

It was after midnight by this time, and my hands were shaking badly as I walked back to my desk and picked up my cell phone. I texted Tahira, my co-teacher, who would be getting off work shortly. I then called my friend Dave, who lives just a 2-minute walk away, and told him with rattled breath of my near-miss. Tahira and I talked for a solid 45 minutes after she got off work. By 2 AM, she was heading home. It’s now 5:10 AM and I haven’t yet been able to get back to sleep. But I’ve got to try. The teaching day will begin again before I know it.

My only saving grace is that Koreans are a drinking bunch. It’s very possible this perpetrator, whoever he was, was just some slovenly drunk dude who had a little too much soju in his belly to be thinking clearly. It’s hard for me to contemplate the possibility that this was premeditated and intentional, and I actually don’t think I’ll be sleeping soundly for quite a few nights now, as all of my instincts will be on the alert for any unsafe signals out there. One thing’s for damn sure, I’ll be getting some kind of decals to cover my balcony windows pronto, and I am going to fight tooth and nail to be moved to Tahira’s 2^nd floor apartment next month when she leaves for home. Signing off and praying for a little shuteye,

~Melanie

Show the World How Dirty You Can Be

There are few sensations that I can equate with the goosebumpy feeling of mineral-laden mud being literally painted onto every square inch of my bare skin... Painted as in, hand me the paintbrush, we need to apply a second coat. Your first thought is something along the lines of "Ewww, this is cold and sticky and dirty and wet." And it just seems to go against the grain of any well-bred person taught from a young and impressionable age to stay out of the mud. But three point seven seconds later you're over it, your inner two-year-old has made contact with you again, and your artistic spirit takes over, ready to dip the paint brush in the bucket and wield all kinds of new and exciting designs on your mud-scaped bod.
Mineral mud. In liberal doses. This is the attraction that draw thousands to what has become in a short time Korea's most popular annual festival. Daecheon Beach, renowned for its unique blend of minerals naturally occurring in the soil, has carved out quite a name for itself as the home of the mud "makeover." For nine days straight, foreigners the country over (and a fair amount of Koreans, which was pleasantly surprising) turn out for morning-to-midnight mud-a-thons, mud wrestling contests, mud slides, mud massages, mud races, swimming in mud fountains, and of course, the ubiquitous mud painting that is most likely each visitor's first exposure to the grayish goo.
Mud is the single unifying element bringing together people from a wide cross-section of backgrounds and nationalities, and giving them reason not only to slap a fresh coat on perfect strangers, but then turn around and tackle them (all in good fun) in the wrestling ring two minutes later. And then, when they've had enough dirty fun, it's time to head to the beach and let the ocean waves wash their bodies clean. (This of course, is soon thereafter followed by a return visit to the mud buckets... at least, that was the case for me.)
When Chetty, Penny, Francois, and I started discussing the prospect of attending the Boryeong Mud Festival together, we knew right away we were on to something good. Penny had access to a tent from the school where she worked, and Chetty and I had sleeping bags to contribute. Penny and Francois had a connection with a Korean guy living in nearby Taean who was planning to drive to the festival, so we even had "wheels." And before we knew it, we had schemed up a pretty spectacular weekend -- wallowing to our hearts' content in mud, splashing in the ocean, partying it up, and camping somewhere near the beach when our bodies finally caved from exhaustion.
We left Saturday at noon with Jeff and some of his Korean friends, and drove south along the coastal highway, dodging pockets of light rain that sprung up along the way. The views of Korean's emerald hills and brilliant green rice fields were enough to keep Penny and me entertained as we headed towards Daecheon. Before long, we had arrived and managed to find one of the beach huts housing buckets and paintbrushes and mud that seemed to be practically evaporating into thin air. Everyone, literally everyone, seemed to be in on the fun, and if you didn't think quick, you were left without a paint brush or left to wait until the bright-orange-shirted Mud Festival official helpers came to replenish the buckets with another dose of mud.
After spending some time all muddied up, I have to say that pigs are a lot brighter than they get credit for. Being covered from head to toe with liquid clay actually offered an immediate relief from the stifling rays of the sun (which had managed to overtake the rainclouds and make a fine appearance for the balance of the afternoon). Not only did the mud provide a natural "sunscreen," but as the breeze would blow in from the coast, my wet body would prickle with goosebumps, and I could feel my outsides tightening as the mud dried into place, enveloping me in a grainy, light plaster. (Girls, you know that feeling, when the mud mask you've painted onto your face starts drying and you can hardly crack a smile because your skin has turned into a semi-permanent museum exhibit? That's what I'm talking about.)
We spent the rest of the day flitting from one mud exhibit to another, resting here and there with a bottle of something cold to wash down our parched throats, wading in the salty ocean, and relaxing on the golden-brown sand spilling up from the shore. My camera, unfortunately, had to go into hiding as my fingers were in absolutely NO condition to try to operate it. (You can either be an onlooker, or be in on the fun, but unless you are toting around some kind of mud-proof disposable, it's next to impossibly to do both... that being said, there were a LOT of folks there with big expensive cameras, making the most of this very lively photo op. They were, however, in all cases staying a pretty safe distance from actually touching any mud themselves.)
Later that night, we managed to make friends with a very outgoing party of Koreans camped out for their dinner meal under the large canopy umbrella where we had carefully stashed our valuables earlier that afternoon. As we arrived and started poking around for our backpacks and cameras, a jovial guy seated at the outdoor table picked up on our plight and helped us locate our things. Then, in what turned out to be one of the highlights of the entire Mud Festival experience, one by one he and his friends drew us into their circle, offering a bite of this, a few words of that, a shot of soju to swig down together. By the time we left, we had posed for several photos from cameras belonging to both camps, and we all had that "natural high" feeling that comes when, as a traveler, you've made a connection with others that feels genuine and authentic and in no way touristy. It was definitely memorable.
The rest of the night was a blur. We fed ourselves well on freshly caught -- and raw! (but oh so delicious!) -- white fish fillets, got a bit hammered with a few too many rounds of soju, took a stroll along the boardwalk and caught a few glimpses of fireworks lighting up the night sky, and ran our voices into the ground in an underground karaoke room. By 2:30 a.m. we were ready to start scouting out a place to call home for the night, and started heading back to Jeff's car to unload our tent and other gear. Just then, it was as if the sky split a seam, because rain began pouring down in torrents. We quickly ducked under a hotel awning and stood for a few minutes in disbelief at the downpour, and then, as if we were reading each other's minds, unanimously decided that now was as good a time as any to head on back. The Mud Festival had far exceeded any of our expectations. It was a definite not-to-be-missed experience, and for the uninitiated, my only hope is that you'll make it a point to cover yourself in mud from head to toe at least once in your life, so you can understand first-hand what all the hype is about :) Don't be afraid to show the world how dirty you can be!