Look Mom, I'm Famous!.. (Almost)

I'm savoring my moment of stardom with the discovery this morning that my photo was featured in the Korean Herald. No, not one that I took... that would have been ridiculously cool. One that I'm in. But still, a little limelight never hurts, right? Even if it happens to be only my dismembered head sitting atop Adam's monstrous backpack. Oh yes, I believe I see a hand in there as well...

The shot is a photo taken of me, and Adam Hawkins, a friend I made at the MaskDance Festival in Andong last weekend. We were stringing small flags bearing our hand-painted wishes on a rope of twisted hemp strung near the Mask Theater. One of my friends from home asked me recently what the significance of, or the history behind, this event was. I can't really say too much about either, other than that the writing and raising of wishes is something Koreans do during a part of a number of celebrations. Often the wishes are strung around a "Wishing Tree." Here at the MaskDance festival, we hung them near wooden effigies of Hahoe masked men... our "wish protectors"?

As for my newspaper moment of fame, some of you who aren't as fluent in Korean as me are probably wondering what it might say. Actually, as I'm not in the least bit fluent, I'm still waiting on the translation... so I'll get back to you on that :)

Highlights from Andong's MaskDance Festival

I'm back from an incredible weekend in Andong and Hahoe, where the annual Maskdance Festival is still underway. And though it was short (and I missed the traditional wooden-masked dancers, too sad!), it was worth every bit of effort (which was quite a lot) to get there. There was so much to see and do, and I'll definitely plan to return next year to catch more of the action... provided I'm still here in Korea ;) (something tells me I will be).

So, in a departure from my usual type of blog post, I'm going to make this more of a photo montage, with some brief explanations for the sake of "cultural education." Here we go ~


One of many venues within the festival complex, the Mask Theater is a covered dome stadium with a stage, where international dance troupes performed throughout the weekend. Here, Russian dancers wow the audience with a Troika or two:


And more dancers, these from the Philippines (aren't those costumes fantastic?):


At another venue, near the bank of the river, a shaman (fortune teller and spiritual vessel) entrances the crowds with her hypnotic singing (note the W10,000 bills stuffed under her hat), while a skinned pig (this is real, folks) sits just outside the tent, a token symbol of good luck and prosperity. (I actually read up a bit on this, and pigs are considered such a good omen because of their portly build, which connotes abundance and wealth, and because females produce such large litters, which symbolizes fertility. A pig's head will always be found at Shamanist ceremonies and sacrifices, as well as events such as the opening of a new business, moving to a new home, or even buying a new car. Want to read more? Look here)


Kites were flying high throughout the festival. This young guy was quite a skilled kite-flyer. Over the course of several hours, he succeeded in raising one kite after the other into the air, connected on one verrrrry long string. It was quite a spectacle:

















Food vendors lined the streets in white tents, their delicious-smelling dishes spilling out into the crowds and across the streets. You could try any one of literally hundreds of snacks and dishes, including freshly grilled corn, marinated meats on skewers, miniature waffles filled with bean paste, roasted chestnuts, corn dogs with fried potato ... I even saw a doner kebab stand!!


One of my favorite activities was dipping a calligraphy brush in a pot of thin black ink and scratching my wish onto a thin strip of paper. Following the lead of the buzzing crowd, I then wedged my paper strip between the fibers of twisted hemp strung up among tall wooden statues. What did I wish for? You'll have to see for yourself:


And last but not least, the masks themselves... wooden masks, Venetian masks, masks from all over the world... masks that begged a touristy photo-stop, masks that towered over you from their lofty perches, masks printed onto balloons, embedded into stone walls... masks lining shop fronts, spilling out of vendor's displays... mask necklaces, mask wallhangings, mask puppets, mask dolls...


So, if you're in Korea at the moment, and trying to find some last-minute ideas for how to spend the upcoming three-day weekend, run -- don't walk -- to your nearest bus station and hit the road for Andong!

Want to know more about Mask Festival? Check out these links:
Andong Mask Dance Festival
The Official Website for Maskdance Festival 2008
Korean Traditional Masks

Or, to see more of my pictures, follow this link.

At Home in Hahoe Village, Maskdance Festival 2008

What do troupes of masked performers, hoards of happy onlookers, one quaint traditional village, and a shower of shimmering fireworks have in common? If you guessed the Andong Maskdance Festival, you were right :)

This weekend marked the beginning of a ten-day celebration in Andong, Korea's south-eastern Gyeongsangbuk province -- a festival to honor the tradition of the mask and its place in cultures around the world, and in Korea's history in particular. Hahoe, home of the legendary Korean wooden masks, is steeped in the folklore surrounding their creation.

According to legend:

"A series of disasters and bad luck were happening in the peaceful and beautiful Hahoe Folk Village, and all villagers were very concerned. One day, Mr. Heo, a good person from Hahoe Folk Village, dreamed about a Folk God who told him what he must do:

'You should clean your body every day and carve a set of masks with your heart -- then all disasters will disappear. But there is one strict rule: You must finish the work within 100 days and no one is allowed to see you during the time that you are making the masks.'

"So Mr. Heo started to work on the masks. He did not tell anyone else in the village about his dream. One day, a lady who lived in the same village and who loved Mr. Heo very much, his as she waited for him. She could not bear it any more at stole a glance at him. As soon as she did this, Mr. Heo fell down and died, leaving one Mask unfinished, Imae (Foolish Servant). This is why Imae Mask does not have a chin, as it was left unfinished." [note from me: can you find it in the photo to the right?]

"Villagers of Hahoe danced with the Hahoe masks (aristocrat, scholar, young bride, meddler, Buddhist monk, butcher, old widow, young woman and foolish servant) and finally danced the village back to peace. "

Even today, Hahoe is a peaceful and beautiful folk village where life seems to carry on much the same as it did centuries ago. And despite the busloads of tourists that come from around the country (and world) to sample a taste of traditional Korean life and enjoy its peaceful ambience, it maintains some semblance of authenticity, which is part of its subtle charm.

This past weekend, I had a chance to spend a chilly night and leisurely morning soaking up the special flavor of Korean culture that Hahoe serves up on a heaping platter. I arrived by bus with a group of CouchSurfers (who converged in Andong from various points around the country) Saturday night, after poking around the festival grounds. As we stepped off the bus and into the dark night, I tugged at the cuffs of my jacket, pulling them over my hands to ward off the sting of the evening chill. We walked along a quiet dirt road which followed a riverbank until we arrived at the traditional house, Hagungje #13, which was our home for the night.

Though it was dim, as we stepped into the house, muted light emanating from an open door gave us a view of the house's unusual arrangement. It was built as a series of rooms, which comprised four outer walls, all facing an inner courtyard which was exposed to the open air. Short sets of cement steps led from the ground to any of a number of rooms, most of which served as sleeping areas. I peered inside one of the rooms and was intrigued by its small size and spartan furnishings. There was enough room for four or five bodies to lay sardine-style on a hard floor, and a "yo" (traditional Korean mattress) and stack of blankets to warm us. A window at the opposite end of the room, a simple wooden frame lined with rice paper which slid along a wooden track and latched with a fabric tie, was the only other decoration.

The kitchen, set in the back corner of the house, was bustling as the old couple living in the house began to prepare our dinner. After dropping our bags and removing our shoes, we stepped into the "dining room," a large, low-lying wooden slab near the courtyard. Although the table was quite long, our group was bursting in size, and we spilled over onto two adjacent round tables, filling up the entire area with our bodies and energetic conversation. The man of the house began what turned out to be an insanely busy job of waiting on the lot of us as we feasted on platters of steaming hot and spicy "jjim dalk," Andong's signature dish -- a mixture of chicken bits, glass noodles, leeks, and near-lethal doses of hot pepper (though somehow, I didn't think our dishes were deathly spicy).

Some of the group took off for the riverbank to watch fireworks, while others (myself included) stayed behind to finish dinner and warm up under layers of blankets. I later found out that this wasn't your typical fireworks show -- it was a special affair (...and I'm still chiding myself for missing it. I suppose there's always next year...) Seonyu Julbulnori, or traditional Korean fireworks, aren't shot from the ground, as are the festive explosions we're accustomed to. These fireworks are like gigantic sparklers strung above the ground. When they're lit, they create the ethereal feeling of falling stars or, as Roboseyo describes (and I quite like his visual), "bright flower petals floating to the ground."

[Check out this video footage from Roboseyo]

The rest of the night was a blur as round after round of soju and maggeolli found their way to our table, and the energy wound up before the evening wound down. Eventually, I retired to my shared room, tucked my too-thin blanket around my shivering body, and managed to settle into some sort of sleep (though between the winter chill and neighboring snorers, it wasn't particularly productive).

The next morning, after waking the the sounds of chirping birds outside our rice-paper window, new-found friend Adam (also an English teacher in Korea) and I did a little exploring around the village. We circled its perimeter, walking along narrow, dusty roads that tangled their way through the village, out to the edges of its rice fields and along the river, enjoying the peaceful pace of this rural respite from the busy world just outside its gates. We watched local farmers working in their fields, listened to the sound of wind blowing over vast carpets of rice crops, and even managed to find a litter of playful puppies. After putting our cameras to good use at some sort of wooden statue mini-park, we said farewell to our fair village and returned to the festival grounds to finish out the Maskdance weekend.

See more pictures of my visit to Hahoe Village here

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!