Annnd Now They're Singing....

Happy weekend everyone! It is time to update you on my trip yesterday to the Wine and Traditional Music Festival in Yeongdong in north Chungcheong Provence. The strange school week ended (only a three day week broken up by various holidays), and after being reminded that "my voice sounds funny" by all of my students multiple times because of a cold, it was time to have a relaxing wine tasting adventure! Wine cures colds right? It's fruit...

Shanna, Katrina, her mum (Kandi) and I met at 5:00am, yes it was still dark, and hopped in a taxi to Hongdae Station. When we arrived there were two "Adventure Korea" buses waiting to pick up travelers heading out on two separate trips. One bus was going farming...and the other was our bus! We set off on our way, stopping twice to pick up more wine-tasters from various stations around Seoul. Driving to Yeongdong allowed me to see a completely different part of Korea. There were trees and mountains EVERYWHERE, which I definitely do not get to see everyday in the city. It was beautiful! The festival itself was set up in different areas around this town. Our first stop, naturally, was the wine tasting tent. 

Kandi spending her last day with her daughter :)

Walking into this ginormous tent we were greeted with about 20 wine tasting booths each pouring their selection of dry red, sweet red, and white wines. Some booths even had liquor (like a cognac booth that we were pulled to by our event guide, Max). Anyways, we made our ways down the booths each one, finding some we loved and some we...didn't love too much.

Not only could you drink the wine but you could also soak your feet in it! Apparently if you soak your feet in wine mixed with hot water three times a week, you will get a "smokin' french bikini body" according to Max. While I am a tad skeptical of the results, it felt really good!

We were wandering from table to table when we heard music and looked down to the end of the tent where there was a wedding! Hey, perfect wedding venue right? Wine for your guests no matter what type of wine they like! Some people were obviously feeling the effects of the wine after a while...

Over indulged a bit

 Along with weddings, the wine tasting tent also offered a way for us to win prizes! We were listening to a very excited man on a microphone yelling something when suddenly a group of Korean audience members ran up on stage. Not ones to be left out of something like this, Shanna and I also ran up with them. Who knows what we had just agreed to join by doing so. We saw a huge blow up orb with about 40 small foam balls being blown around the inside. The purpose of the game we had just joined was to grab as many of the the small foam balls inside the large one and throw them on the ground by our feet. The one who ended up with the most, wins. Pretty simple right? Well I made it through a few rounds but it was much more difficult than I thought! I did get a bag of grape juice as a consolation prize- score! While I sad back down, Shanna kept going through the rounds until she made it to the final! And after a valiant effort on her part she ended up with second place, which got her a free bottle of wine and some grape jam! Not too shabby right? We were so proud of her :)

After going through the wine tent we ventured off to see other parts of the festival. There were several tents with food, trinkets, and other items for sale. We also watched a few rounds of a traditional Korean wrestling match between two young boys. The spectators got really into the match, cheering for their favorite wrestler. We left the fight and kept wandering to find the strangest rickshaw-like carts pulling people around. At first we thought they were being pulled by little kids, but then we realized that they were machines attached to the carts that walked when you pushed or pulled the lever in front of the seat! It was a bit creepy the way these carts were stumbling around the square. 

The group was then taken to another area of the festival which was all about traditional music called Samulnori (사물놀이) as well as the Korean folk song Arirang (아 리랑). We could play the drums and string instruments as well as win a wooden flute (sogeum), which I did! Granted I won because I beat the guy giving them out in a game of rock-scissors-paper, but who says that doesn't take some skill? 

Nearing the end of our day, we walked around the traditional music area of the festival on our own looking at the way they made their janggu (or traditional two sided drum) and other instruments. Then we got to see a female drumming group, which was incredible! The precision and choreography of their drumming was amazing to watch and hear. 

Around 4:30 we were told to meet back on the bus. This is when the real adventure started. As this was a wine-tasting trip, several members of our group were feeling the effects of the alcohol, resulting in loud conversations about god-knows-what, and impromptu karaoke sessions (explanation of the title of this post). These girls were not exactly American Idol worthy and the entire bus was quiet except for their attempts to sing bohemian rhapsody and backstreet boys. After a while of trying to block out the sound, I realized it had gone eerily quiet. Shanna tapped me and pointed back to their seat...I have photograph evidence of this but for their privacy I will not post it. Basically one girl had curled up in the fetal position while the other used her wine-bottle-box as a head rest and was holding it like a teddy bear. We had a quiet rest of the journey...or so we thought...

It took us about an hour and a half to reach the rest stop around 6:00pm, then another 40 minutes to reach the first drop off point (6:40pm). That's when traffic started to get really bad. We did not get to the Express Bus Terminal (the second drop off point) until around 7:45 and then still had to go to our stop at Hongnae station. After about an hour and a half of lurching, stopping, and getting no where, the driver began to speak to us in Korean. The 10 of us left in the bus looked around and realized that both our guides had gotten off a the last stop, meaning there was no translator with us. One girl tried the best she could and told us the bus driver thought it would be best to get off at the stop wherever we were at that time because of traffic. We all would rather do anything than sit on that bus for any longer so we hopped off. 

We then realized that this was going to be a bit more complicated than expected. We were off a different stop than usual so we wandered around trying to look for the right stop then just decided to work the subway systems to weave our way back home. For some reason, this particular night, every resident of Seoul and their mothers were in the subway stations going our direction. The subway started off as a bit crowded then gradually became a human sardine can where I couldn't move without pushing someone over and starting a domino effect. Each stop, when we thought we could not possible fit anyone else in the train car, more people squeezed on causing a combination of moans/screams/and grunts from member already inside. Here is your photo evidence!

After about 6 stops it was our turn to push ourselves off. Squeezing through we FINALLY made it back to our bus stop around 10:00pm. That is a 7 and a half hour trip back home from a place that was really only about 2 and a half hours away. Yikes Seoul traffic! So besides the trip home, the day was lovely! Got to taste some delicious wine, learn about traditional Korean music, and spend it all with good friends. We also got to see the Seoul Fireworks Festival from the bus which was a nice added bonus of the evening. Here are some extra random photos for you to enjoy :)

Now it is time to head into a full 5 day week at school. No more crazy excursions for me for a few weeks, so I get to rest and relax. Hopefully I will get over this cold/cough so I sound like my old self again! Teaching my kindergarteners a Halloween song while sounding like a pubescent boy does not bode well for our performance at the end of the month!

Korean phrase of the post: 아이고 내 발이야! "ah-e-ko nae bal-e-ya"- Ouch! That's my foot!

xoxo