Fresh mud and live octopus

So I have another culinary adventure to share. A bunch of us Finns and a few of our friends decided to embark on a mission. We were to try a very normal local food: live octopus. Basically, they take the octopus out of a tank, chop off its head and serve the arms (no, they are not called tentacles) on a plate. Simple and delicious, right? I swear I have never been so excited to eat anything. The arms were still moving, desperately trying to find their way back to the sea. My god, it was gross! I can’t believe I actually put that thing in my mouth. My hands were trembling, but I just closed my eyes and went on with it. I tried to chew as fast as I could, but it was really hard. And the suction cups kept on sticking to your tongue. I felt a bit better since all of the other people in the table were equally disturbed by the act, as the pictures prove.

Yes, it really was just as disgusting as it sounds.

Timo having the same trouble as I was. David, the vegetarian, looking surprisingly happy in the back.

Jenna, our Korean hostess, had no trouble letting an dead octopus leg stick to her tongue. Awesome!

On the brighter side, Yonsei organized a trip to the Boryeong Mudfestival (http://www.mudfestival.or.kr/english/festival/festival1.php). Basically there’s nothing else there but mud. So we just ran around in the mud, painted ourselves with mud, mud wrestled, took a mud slide and swam all the mud off in the ocean. There was also a mud spa with a mud sauna, a mud Jacuzzi and mud bathes. A lot of people that I know ended up going with different groups, so it was also great to see so many people at the same time. Actually, it was an absolutely awesome day. And my skin felt really smooth and relaxed afterwards.

See all 'em boys posin'.

The holy Trinity: Juho the Son, Lauri the Father and Otto the Holy Ghost.

A spa, boy style. Me, Mark, David and Otto.

If you have been following the news, you’ll know that the monsoons hit the Korean peninsula pretty hard this year. There was a typhoon running around the south causing a lot of damage. Here in Seoul it’s been raining pretty much four days straight. And I mean poring. I don’t have any shoes left to walk outside in, even if I wanted to leave the house. Of course there are slightly graver problems than my lack of chance to tan and my forever-ruined Lacoste’s, such as several people dying and millions of won worth of damages. The Han River, which runs through the entire city, has flooded so bad that all of the parks around it meant for running are now more suitable for swimming. When the water levels hits the freeway, that’s when it gets scary. People have had to evacuate from their homes and probably will return to ruined apartments. But in any case, if it so happened that any of you were worried or something (hey, thanks for calling), I’m fine and so is everyone I know. For more on the floods, read http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/07/16/storm.korea.ap/index.html.

Way on the other side of Russia, in Finland, apparently there has never been a better summer. Though I try to remind myself that being in Korea is quite cool, I cannot help and feel a little resentment. I want to have strawberries and peas at the market place, have a barbeque at my backyard, have a cider at a terrace, go swimming in a clean lake and stay up all night when the sun is shining. I’m positive that a rainy season will start immediately after I return in August… I just try to live by the consolation my friend gave me: “Summer will be soon gone and forgotten, but the fact that you were in Korea will be remembered”. I’m trying to tell myself that he’s right, but the smell of grilled steak is still rather tempting. Here’s a link to an article from the New York Times praising Finland’s summer: http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/07/16/travel/16helsinki.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1153270536-MIv/x8/u1f2JOM1RUVNeLw.

In my dreams