[I found this post from 2014 in my drafts. Don’t know why I never posted it.]
I hadn’t done anything cool since I moved to Asan, so when my coworker, JiHyun, asked me if I wanted to go to Jindo’s Sea Parting Festival, I was thrilled.
Highlights of the festival? Watch the famous Jindo dogs jump through fire, stay at a hotel on the beach, walk through the ocean at 4am carrying torches, watch parades, dancers, and eat delicious food from around the world. Um, yes.
The trip was organized through a travel company geared for foreigners; it was my first one and I had no clue what to expect. It was INSANE.
JiHyun told me that we were going to meet up with three other girls she knew from church: Leaa, Laura, and Sarah. We all met up at a rest stop on the side of the road to wait for our tour bus that was coming from Seoul. Jindo is about 4 hours south of Asan, so we had a long ride ahead of us. There were 5 total charter buses paid for by our organization, all filled with foreigners. It was ludicrous. The bus was at capacity when it picked us up, so we all had to sit next to random people. Luckily my seatmate was pretty cool; unfortunately everyone else was not.
We were all sitting at the back of the bus, a captive audience for a dumb white guy who was loudly announcing his life story in graphic and offensive terms. After hearing him describe all manner of topics from his dad’s porn preference to his experiences with anuses, I vowed to myself that I’d never get on a bus with another American again.
4 long hours later we arrived in Jindo, which is a tiny town famous for its dogs and ocean festivals. We hopped off to watch a traditional Korean play, join in on a dance, and then hopped on the bus again to watch a dog show performed by the famous Jindo dogs.
The weather was pretty wretched on Saturday: rainy and gray. We all headed back to the hotel, which was perched on top of a mountain but had a perfect view of the festival. We crammed ourselves in the dining hall and ate some delicious Korean barbecue pork before collapsing early into bed (or rather our blankets on the floor). The festival’s main attraction was the sea parting event where the tides reveal the beach for about one hour, allowing people to walk all the way to an island a distance away. It began at 4am, s, knowing we had to be up by 3, we decided to be party poopers and get some rest. All of the other foreigners caroused until dawn (our window was serenaded 5 different times with screeching renditions of the American national anthem.)
Miss Anna Teacher 