"A little dirt never hurt anyone..."

Well, July finally came, bringing our much awaited (two day) summer break, and of course, Mud Fest.  Yes, I said Mud Fest.

The Boryeong Mud Festival was started in 1998 as a tourist attraction. The mud is trucked in to the beach from an area nearby. The mud is supposed to have some minerals that are good for your skin, but mostly the festival is an excuse to run around on the beach in the sun, covered in mud. We have been looking forward to it since we decided to come to Korea.

Some wonderful friends of ours who run the incredibly useful website TheYeogiyo.com, organized the trip.  We took a train and stayed in a minbak (aka a big room with sleeping mats and a bathroom) with 26 other people. It was a good group of people and we had a great time. Saturday it rained until the afternoon, but that didn't stop us from putting on our swimsuits and playing in the ocean for a while before getting muddy.

Mud Fest was definitely foreigner central. Even with the rain on Saturday there were a ton of people. We made it our duty to cover ourselves in mud and hug as many unsuspecting clean strangers as we could find. The boys wrote "FREE HUG" on their chests in the mud... and we did our best to mud-ify all those who were not brave enough to do it themselves.  :-)

Along with a zillion foreigners, we also found that there were many photographers running around taking pictures of us and all the rest of the crazies. Perhaps I should re-phrase this. By many, I mean swarms... swarms of photographers taking your picture every time you turned around. We did our best to get on next year's Mud Festival advertisements... or at least the nightly news.

 Sunday morning we woke up to a beautiful, blue sky and 80 degrees at 9am. We spent the day playing... water, mud, water mud. A few hours and one heck of a sunburn later, we went home tired, hot and happy.

One of our favorite things about Korea is seeing all of the signs and tee-shirts in English. 

Sweet foot statue.

The beach in the morning... pre massive numbers of  muddy foreigners.

This is the mud playground before they pumped in the day's mud.

The crowds increase...

The line for the mud slide.. We decided that it was more fun to play in the ocean than stand in line for hours to go down one slide. Wise choice, I think.

These girls were more than happy to pose. Don't miss the quintessencial Korean peace sign.

Mud Prison. How this pink girl managed to stay clean we will never know.

The Muddy Masses.

Because it's not Korea without a girl group dancing on stage in brightly colored outfits.

Ahh! We're covered in mud!

Our group (photo stolen from facebook).

Because what better way to get on next year's poster than to make a muddy human pyramid?

These were all the photographers taking pictures of our awesome pyramid. (again, stolen picture)

All and all, a fantastic weekend.

 Like my dad always says... a little dirt never hurt anyone. :-)