Sports day and the Fire Flower Festival

A little while ago our schools held a Sports Day for all of the branches. We now have 15 branches across Busan and Changwon cities, and all staff and teachers were invited. This was the first time we'd done such a thing.

It started at 9:30am on a Sunday morning, and waking up on time was arguably the first (and most difficult) event. But a respectable number of us showed up on time and began milling around the soccer field of Yeonsan Middle School, where the event was held.

Here's Jeff and Anthony waiting for the day's events to begin. Anthony has since been promoted to Head Instructor of the branch that I worked at during my first year here.

The CEO Mr Kang, addressing all of the teachers in Korean. We've gotten used to not understanding any of his speeches. He sure sounds friendly though.

Amanda was fairly tipsy for the whole day. In Korea, it's more acceptable to be slightly intoxicated during the day.

Here's Heather and me, happy as usual.

For lunch we had roast pig and donkasu (schnitzel type things). The food was good, but I can't help comparing any roast pig to the New Year's Pig back in Australia that Hong's dad always cooks. Nothing ever comes close to that.

There were a number of competitions during the day, which included foot-baseball and dodgeball. In this event, everyone had to hold the material firmly while the smallest person in the group ran across the top of it. Because we weren't strong enough, it was more of a crawling/tumbling than running.

The object of this game was to blow up as many balloons as you could. Then there was a competition to pop them all. Kind of fun, but could have been better organised.

For this event, we had to race in teams around the witches hat, while locked together in a long hoop. One person got to run on the outside and push. It wasn't long before we realised that different people have different sized legs and different speeds at which they run. This made the task considerably more difficult than first imagined.


The object of this game was to bounce the ball as many times as possible. I think we got to 17 or so.

We split the entire group into two teams and had a massive tug-o-war. Our team won both times, possibly because we had more of the bigger guys on our team. I pulled a muscle in my leg during this, which I referred to thereafter as a battle wound.

In wars (and tug-o-wars) there will always be casualties, I guess.

Mr Hong and Conan were the two final contenders of the relay race. It was a heated rivalry between the Gwangan and Changwon branches, but Mr Hong won the day by diving (or falling) at the end. He actually broke his kneecap here, which he discovered the next day. He had surgery soon after and now hobbles around headquarters, defiant and proud.

Daniel recently bought a motorbike. It's a Honda CD-R and is pretty fast. I sold my scooter ages ago partly because it was a little dangerous.

Jef and Amanda were up late drinking the night before. When they arrived at Sports Day, it wasn't long before the ever-resourceful Amanda located the beer stash. The last event of the day was karaoke and I'm sure you can put two-and-two together by yourselves.

They sang 'It's Raining Men', a song that has since become somewhat of an anthem for us here in Korea.

And the audience cheered. All in all, it was a good day out and more fun than I had anticipated. It's rare that we get to see all of our school staff together at the same time.

Recently the annual Fire Flower Festival was held at Gwangali beach. This is always a massive occasion with around one million people observing the event. I headed down to Anthony's place early in the afternoon. Luckily he landed his new apartment at the beachfront a couple of weeks before the event. Fireworks were launched from the bridge and the boats you can see there.

As time ticked by, the crowd below began to accumulate. Soon it became a patchwork quilt of picnic rugs. We had stocked Anthony's apartment with plenty of food and beverages hours beforehand and enjoyed the scenery below.

As always there were friendly policemen around in their preferred teams of 30 or so.

But actually, at large events like this in Korea, there's usually very little trouble.

We briefly went down below to have a look around and saw this line up for a convenience store. When there are too many people, an assistant at the door will get everyone in a queue and you have to wait until other people have left. Otherwise it just becomes silly inside and you could be pressed up against a Coke refrigerator and unable to move when the fireworks start.

At least you'd have plenty to drink.

We sat around in the apartment and had some pre-fireworks drinks as more of our friends showed up. Bunny-earing in the middle of this photo is Hyo-ju, Anthony's good friend from Cheonju. She once brought us a big bucket of gamjatang (pork and potato stew) from her hometown, which is famous for it.

By this time, any poor commuter attempting to traverse from one end of the road to the other would soon find themselves gridlocked in people-traffic. I spared a few thoughts for such people in the thronging mess below as I comfortably sipped my beer at the window. Contemplation is always much easier when you're in a nice apartment.

Then the show started. There were some impressive new lighting effects from the bridge as well as remote controlled aeroplanes that were involved in the show. To give you an idea of scale, that bridge is around 7.5 km long in its entirety.

The show was choreographed to various theme songs, including 'Allegria' by Cirque du Soleil, which was a classy pick. As the 'fire flowers' lit up the night sky, the crowds below increased their thronging to a dull raw.

These was also a new addition - little floating fireworks that were released by a boat and gently bobbed up and down on the water.

The show lasted a little over half an hour and the view this year was much better than last. If you flick back in this blog to the same festival last year, you'll see that back then we were reduced to waiting in a stairwell for the show to begin. We were also about a kilometre further away.

That's why it's good to have friends like Ants-on-me (Anthony).


Here's a video of the show toward the end.

As the crowds started clearing out, large amounts of street rubbish became visible from our vantage point. I took this long-exposure shot with my trusty and compact (yet no-frills) Sony DSC. If only those pesky people didn't move, it would have looked much clearer. The next time you're walking on a recently crowded street at night, consider pausing every once in a while, lest some poor blogger be attempting a long exposure shot of your surrounds.

After this, Heather and I went down to ground zero for a closer inspection of the debris. Not long after this, teams of council workers set about cleaning up the mess. In the morning it was all cleared away.

After that we meandered around the streets for a while, which were busy until the wee hours of the morning. This photo was taken outside Thursday Party, which is now only a minute away from Anthony's apartment. It was a fun night out and I hope to be able to make it down for the same event next year.

Look out for the next post, because Heather and I have a rather special announcement to make.

See you soon!

Boryeong Mud Festival 2008

We arrived in Boryeong late in the afternoon, checked into our hotel and wandered down to the beach. Boryeong is a small city of around 100,000 residents, but its mud festival has attracted 1.5 million visitors since it began in 1998. This success has largely been due to a clever marketing campaign that runs nationwide in the weeks leading up to the event.

There were noticeably more people and attractions than last year. This mud slide welcomes visitors to the main entrance of the beach.

The idea of the mud festival is to get covered in mud, relax and have some fun. It was a nice weekend away, and we managed to fulfill all three criteria.

One of the new additions this year was a 'Mud Prison', which you can see here in the middle of the photo. The idea is to stand inside the little room and then people from outside fling mud at you through the bars. I chose to put my camera safely away into my plastic bag at this point in time.

We got ourselves muddy and then washed off in the sea. After that we made a sandcastle. I've made a lot of sandcastles in my time, and I believe the key to making a good one is to bring some equipment like buckets and spades. But we didn't have any.

You are free to imagine what our sandcastle looked like. Or didn't look like.

It wasn't long before our grumbling stomachs drowned out the sounds of our voices so we decided to seek nourishment in the town. Many of the visitors to the mud festival were English teachers, and the town had gone to efforts to make our stay more 'homely'.

We ended up choosing an open-air seafood barbecue restaurant. At this particular restaurant they had live shellfish in aquariums and you could pay around $50 as a group of 5 people and eat an unlimited amount. You grill them over a charcoal barbecue and dip them in chilli sauce.

I remember the first time I cooked live shellfish and it was quite a shock. These days however, it only seems mildly strange. I'm still not a fan of live octopus though.

To help manipulate the tasty morsels out of their hot shells, seafood restaurants like these will issue cheap cotton gloves. The standard size proved a little too small for Erick's long tendrils.

This was a game set up at the festival during the night's activities. The idea is to knock the nail completely into the wood using only 2 hits. You'd have to have been a builder or carpenter for a few years to do it properly.


It's very difficult, but I've seen the vendors do it before. This vendor however, was not spot on the mark when challenged by a bystander. The key seems to be more about focus and confidence than brute strength.

We walked up and down the beach at night. There were some performances from Korean celebrities, but we opted to stay out of the crowded area in front of the stage.

Later in the night they had a fireworks festival. It was surprisingly impressive and much longer than the one last year. I've always been a big fan of fireworks in any shape or form. Back in middle school, I remember I used to buy firecrackers on the 'black-market' for around $2 each.

You know that when fireworks explode, it looks like they're coming towards you, right? Well I only just realised on this night that they're exploding in 3D, so if you had a more encompassing view of one, it would look like an inflating balloon. I'd love to see one in a panning Matrix-style effect one day.


Here's a video of the action, shot by Emily.

One of the few annoyances of the festival is the large number of mosquitoes in the area. Last year I was bitten dozens of times. This year there weren't so many, in part due to this council vehicle that was driving around the streets. All of that smoke coming out the back was insecticide. Probably non-lethal, but we still ran for cover to avoid being engulfed.

We arrived back in Busan late on Sunday evening. Here's one of my souvenirs from the festival that I'm posting to a friend soon. It's mud-soap, made from the silty mud in the area. Although the idea of soap is usually to make one cleaner and this seems like a bit of a contradiction, Boryeong mud is supposed to have quite a lot of mineral and cosmetic properties. They also sold mud-shampoo there.

That's all for this week. Next week I'm heading up to Seoul for the 10th GOA'L anniversary, and also to have a poke around Seoul National University. I also still need to fill you in on our past weekend to Daegu city.

See ya!