One Disappointment After Another

Wow! So I don't think that a more hyped up weekend could have been any more of a let down than it was. It was the classic example of everyone telling you it is the best movie they have ever seen which causes you to set unrealistic expectations for the movie. And the movie inevitably ends up being less than great. Such was the case with Mudfest.

We arrived rather late in the day, later than I would have liked to get there, and got on the beach by 3:00 or 3:30. We arrived around 2:00 and had no idea where our hotel was, so we did quite a bit of walking around, probably close to an hour, on one of the more hot and humid days of the summer. If you know me then you understand my disposition at this point. Once we get to the hotel we find that there are no beds, and we will be sleeping on the floor; SWEET!!! We get change and finally get to the beach. We jump in the water for about fifteen minutes and decide to head down to the main pavillion where all the festivities are. By this time my faith in the trip has been restored, and I am ready to have a great time again. We get down there, and I see that there are quite a lot of muddy people. There is nowhere near 20,000 as I was told there would be. There was probably more like 1/10th of that, which was still enough to make the lines for all the mud-covering areas a headache for the buzzing, unmuddied twenty-five year-old. By the time we had walked all the way from our hotel (30min. walk), gotten covered in mud, and taken a dip in the ocean it was nearly six'o clock, dark, and starting to storm.

At the main pavillion there was a mudbath where fifty people at a time would climb in and cover themselves with mud. From there, you could move to a big inflatable King-of-the-Mountain with mud or a big inflatable mud wrestling pit. We went into the mud wrestling pit; it was a bad idea. I got an elbow to the crown of my head and kneed in the back of my calf, a deep bruise which has inhibited me from running for two days now. Eventually, the humidity, crowds, and excessive traversing of Daecheong Beach caught up with us, and we headed back to change for the evening.

When we got back we were so exhausted that we passed out for nearly two hours and finally made it out around 8:30. On the long walk back to the main mudfest area it began to rain quite a bit. So now that we are in nice clothes we are sweaty and wet from rain and humidity. We had a mediocre dinner and set out to see what the night had in store. About two hours later, I found myself downtown trying to find where our group went. Many of them knew other people there and scattered the second we got downtown. I didn't so after spending time trying to find members of our group I got frustrated and walked 30 minutes back to the hotel and went to sleep. Along the way it began to rain tropical storm-style all over me. At that point I tripped over my sandal and fell in some muddy bushes. This put a cap on an already stellar day!!

I woke up the next day around 11 expecting to go to the beach and perhaps salvage the weekend; however, unbeknownst to me, we were leaving on a bus at 1:30 and would not spend anymore time on the beach. The bus ride back was slow and tedious with a bus driver who was fairly relaxed when it came to the bus schedule, and our trip took an hour and a half longer than it should have.

After all was said and done, I was quite frustrated and very disappointed, especially after all the great things I had heard. I am tired of typing now and have a couple more things to say. I do have two more classes and will end here for the day. I hope that this post didn't depress you as much as the living of it did for me. Have a great week! Be back tomorrow with the rest.