Weekend Update No.2

The week has seemed less busy but that was mainly because of finals. So...another short list of activities.

- FINALS ARE OVER!!! Now lets just hope I passed.

- I finally got around to seeing Harry Potter. I quite enjoyed the movie and thought it was one of the better ones made, exciting and generally fast paced. Although, my opinion might have been swayed by my general lack of recollection for events in the 5th book. I think if I knew what they skipped over I might generally be more annoyed with the movie. But as it stands I couldn't even remember Hagrid had a giant he was hiding....um...maybe I need to re-read some books before starting the 7th. I can't believe the series is over.

- Met up with some people from the Come Together group to have dinner and coffee. It is generally nice to know that a community exists and I am beginning to become better friends with them.

- Probably most important for the week was getting the visa information figured out. Too bad it is a little to late to buy a plane ticket to Taiwan. :(. It does give me a chance to travel around Korea.

Later today I am going to meet with Kana and Chikae to figure out our 10 day adventure traveling around Korea. I am excited for the trip and I think it includes visiting Chikae's great grandfater's historical house (he was a famous writer in Korea) and the Busan Sea Festival. I am constantly amazed at how many various Festivals Korea has, it seems like there is a new one ever week.

Speaking of Festivals, I need to talk about the last one I visited which was the mud festival. Overall it was an amazing time. The weather was near perfect for the beach, hot and sunny. It was so funny because the mud was something that you pretty much painted on yourself as sun screen. For some reason I had the conception that there were mud flats or something. Still, we followed suit and soon were covered head-to-toe in painted on mud. The mud slide was amazing fun, but the excess sand made it painful to go down, in that you-laugh-the-whole-way pain. There were also various other mud activities including mud wrestling, mud prison (where the concept is you can't leave until you are covered in mud) and mud skin care products. However the one activity that we both participated in was this obstacle course thing where you had to run across these floating pads to reach the other end (think those Japanese/Korean game shows where people try and do crazy obstacles). There really was no purpose but it was entertaining. When you first step up to go there is this Korean woman who does a mini-interview and then sends you on your way. It was nice being able to understand and answer her questions in Korean (yah!). Although her questions were pretty much what is your name and where are you from, so I was found out as a non-native Korean pretty fast. Sadly I don't have any pictures because I thought a camera and mud wouldn't really go well together. Still to get the general idea here are some pictures of others: http://www.worknplay.co.kr/buryeongsites/index.html