Last Few days/weeks

Hello -
I am going to kind of work backwards, I forgot a few things about the previous month and I will talk about those too.

First, the past weekend was quite eventful. On Sunday, I had made plans to go to a driving range. My Dad sent me an article from one of golf magazines he reads that was about the biggest driving range in the world that happens to be in S. Korea. I met a man who was a student of Mandi (old teacher at my school) He is a CPA, his name is Kevin, and he started taking english classes about 6 months ago. On Sunday, he called and me eventually decided on a place to meet and he picked me up in a 1 year old Lexus and drove me all the way to the driving range. It was a/b an hour away and when we got there it was amazing. It is a huge circle and people hit from the outside of the circle. It is so big that it is impossible to hit it much past the center of the range, even with a driver. The circle was surrounded by many chipping/putting greens that were perfect, but you had to pay additional money for those. We went and I was expecting to play with the other Kevin, so we decided to pay for 1.5 hours (which he would not let me pay for) We left the clubhouse type place where you pay and got on a golf cart that took us to our hitting spot. We got to our spot and he told me that he played golf in the morning and he picked me up/drove me all the way there just so that I could play golf. The hitting space had a mat with a tee like you see back home. There was a ball on the tee and when you would take the ball off the tee the tee would disappear and then reappear with a new ball on top. It is a really good way to make sure that you end up sore the next morning because you can hit balls like a machine. I hadn't hit a ball/swung a club since I left home in May and I was really excited to play so I hit way too many balls. It was incredibly hot so I was drenched in sweat but I continued to hit ball after ball. My first maybe 20 balls were some of the ugliest shots ever, I was really embarassed. I had told Kevin that I had been playing since I was a little kid and that I loved to golf. So I got up and it was very embarassing but once I got going I eventaully started to hit the ball a little better. When I would stop the other Kevin would hit at least a couple balls, but it was basically a whole golf trip just for me to hit balls. It was a great time, i was really excited to go and there might be an actual golfing experience sometime in the future. He said that he wanted to take me and a foreign friend to a real golf course and if that happens i will be sure to update that in the future.

After golfing we had plans to meet my neighbor Jeff, his girlfriend Grace, and another Korean guy named Jun to eat dog. We had been planning on this trip for quite a long time and it finally happened and we had a reservation in our own little private room. The restaurant had the smell of "dog," which is different than any other kind of meat but it is not bad. We walked in and were escorted to our room and ordered our fresh plate of pooch. ha We also ordered a big bowl of boiled chicken and rice along with the rice. The dog came on a plate and it looked almost exactly like my Grandma's beef roast. It was really dark and it didn't make me sick to look at as I was kind of expecting. We kind of jumped into it and it was actually some of the most tender meat I've ever had. It was really tasty and it was a little bit like beef, a little like chicken, and a little bit of mystery meat. It came with a kind of soup and also rice and other side dishes. The whole dog thing was not nearly as discusting as I thought, and I really enjoyed it. Dog is very expensive and we asked why. They said that it is because it is illegal to import dog. You can import cows/pigs/etc. but dog is illegal so it is the most expensive meat in Korea. This part of the story may be kind of disturbing...I was trying to decide if I should include the method of execution and I decided that I would...(disclaimer, skip a few lines if you don't want to know) Jun said that he had a friend that had a dog farm which is the same thing as a cow farm but with dogs. ha, seems kind of odd but then somehow we talked about how the dogs were killed. I was kind of hoping that it would be something humane and painless but it turns out that they actually hang the dogs. The wrap a noose around the neck and then string them up from trees. That kind of made me feel guilty eating the animal but they were already killed so I got over it. The one good thing is that they said that beating the dogs to tenderize the meat is now considered cruel. Ha, it was quite a unique experience but at least I can say that I actually have eaten a dog. i don't know how many people can say that, but there is no need to hide your dogs from me when I come back home... =)

Also, about a month ago I went to the Mud Festival. I forgot to put pictures up but it was a really fun time. It is about a week and a half celebration centered on mud. The whole city, which is on the ocean, is taken over by people in their swimming suits covered in mud. Our bus got caught in traffic and we decided that we would walk to our hotel. We walked through the mud festival and as we got closer we would see people covered in mud (greenish-brownish) and everyone in swimming suits. There was a big blow-up slide with mud, a big mud wrestling pit, and also several other places where you could get covered in mud. We ended up walking forever and finding our hotel but we did and then changed and everything and headed out to get mudded. We went back and played in all of the mud and then found a place where you could throw colored chalk on each other. After the chalk is where the pictures are from. It was nearly impossible to take pictures because of the mud so everyone left their cameras behind. We had one friend who took his camera and stayed relatively mud-free for awhile so he is to thank for the few pictures that we have. It was a really crazy experience but it was a great time.

These are all the stories for now, I am actually headed for bed, the pictures will be following tomorrow hopefully.

Kevin