Only the cute survive and other updates from July

A couple days ago I was reading an article about Korea which said, quite accurately, that in Korea only the cute survive. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING is about being cute. Just as America over focuses on hot/sexy and uses sex-appeal to sell just about anything, Korea does the same with cute. It has taken me all these months to really see this, but now that I have, I see it everywhere! Clothes, phones, restaurants, food packaging, vacation attractions, car accessories… cute is the main selling point. I remember on one of our first trips, to Gokseong, I was left feeling a little disappointed, because the attraction seemed so staged, so fake. Over the last few months, I’ve realized that this is true of many, if not most, attractions, including some of the ones we have visited the last few weeks, but now we know what to expect.

Two weeks ago Andy and I went to Suncheon with our friend Emily. Suncheon is a twenty minute train ride from Yeosu and is home to a beautiful bay conservation area and garden expo. As with most nature attractions, the bay was off the beaten path, which meant it was free from overwhelming cute-aspects. The garden, however, was not, but I’ll get to that later.

The bay, Suncheon Bay Conservation Area, is huge and brimming with wildlife, particularly crabs, goggle-eyed gobis (crazy looking fish!) and birds (supposedly). On the day we went it was fairly overcast, which helped to keep the heat from melting us, but perhaps also kept the birds away. Nonetheless, we had a fantastic time watching the various kinds of crabs scuttle around in the mud, wage epic battle with one another and co-exist semi peacefully with the gobis. Gobis are simply super weird. When we first saw them we thought they were tadpoles because they have tails, legs and arms. But then, we realized that they also have a fin on their backs which they flare out periodically, especially when a crab gets too close. And, not only do they look weird, but they also have this fantastic way of hop-soaring around. They sort of leap and flop about, rather than swimming or crawling. It was pretty hilarious watching them shoot out of the water and ever so slowly infringe on the crabs’ territory.

After the conservation area we went to the garden expo, which we had been hearing about since we first arrived in Yeosu. The garden expo is a giant park featuring flora from dozens of countries around the world. Like many Korean tourist destinations, the expo was a prime spot for cutesiness. It was a magnet for young couples in their matching couples clothes and gaggles of teenage girls, waiting ever so impatiently to fall in love. All of this meant pictures, pictures, pictures! The pictures part was true for us too, but we sort of failed on the whole matching outfits part (ooops :P).

Along with flowers, the park features cultural symbols from around the world, including a telephone booth from England, wooden shoes and a windmill from the Netherlands, as well as multiple picture taking stations in the shape of hearts. A horse drawn wagon pulls visitors along the wide paths and a mini train full of families chugs by periodically. While we did not partake in these, we enjoyed wandering through the various gardens and getting slightly lost along the intertwined paths. The park is really quite large, so we couldn’t see it all, but we managed to walk through Japan, Thailand, Spain, Netherlands, America, Italy and England before our visit was cut a bit short by the arrival of ominous clouds threatening to dump on us.

In the two weeks following our trip to Suncheon, Yeosu had a long stint of rain. Sigh. How I hate rain. Unlike Wyoming, where the rain lasts a few hours, maximum, it can and does rain for days here. Heavy, grey clouds roll in off the ocean and stay for eternity (or so it seems to me). Fortunately, the rain does cool things down for a little while and we get to stop sweating profusely for a few days, as when it is not raining, Yeosu in summer is hot, humid and sticky. Towards the end of last week the rain disappeared, bring the return of muggy summer days.

Luckily for us, last weekend we got to escape the heat by going to the Boryeong mud festival, three hours from Yeosu by train. We went with a big group of teachers from Yeosu and stayed together (all twenty-five of us) in a pension two blocks from the beach, which was fantastic. It dumped rain the whole way there, but by the time we arrived, the rain stopped and after a few hours the sun came out enough to give us all amazing sunburns.

The mud festival is held every year and is exactly what you would expect- people come simply to get covered in mud. Now, I know what most of you are thinking. You went and got covered in mud?? WHY?!?!

Well, why not?? This is one festival that simply seems contrary to Korean cutesy culture (mud does not equal cute, right?), yet it manages to simultaneously appeal to the cute side of things and deviate from it. As we discovered upon arrival, the festival revolves around a series of slides and obstacle courses coated in mud. Stationed all around these are buckets with various colored mud, and this is where cutesy comes in. While regular, old grey mud may not be pretty, pink mud applied in the shape of a heart sure is! We got to see some pretty awesome mud body art and I have so say, some people really can make mud look cute.

The festival is so popular that when we arrived, all the tickets to the slides and such were sold out. So, instead we hung out on the beach, rolled around in random puddles of mud on the sidewalk and wandered through the streets barefoot and carefree. Overall, the festival felt like one giant party and we had a blast.

So, now, here we are at the end of July. Time is slipping by so quickly now. After this week we will have a mere 10 weeks left in Korea. Ten weeks! Yikes! It feels like we have so much we want to do still, yet our weeks and weekends seem to be packed full. Next week we will have our first real, non-holiday vacation. Woot woot!! Andy and I are going to Jeju island, a famous vacation destination south of Yeosu. We’ll be going for three days and we are totally psyched!

Our next post will come at the beginning of August, after we return from our adventure. Until then, we hope you are well and enjoying your summer. We love and miss you all. We are daydreaming of home and can’t wait to see you all again.

Love,

Kali and Andy

 

~Kali