Saturday, October 18, 2008

Suwon vs Gwangju at the World Cup Stadium

Taylor and I went to the World Cup Stadium today in Suwon. Only a five minute drive from our homes, it was too good to miss out. The game was Suwon Blue Wings vs. Gwangju Sangmu (Phoenixes). We destroyed them 2-0. I was surprised that there were actually some minorities on the team, a guy from Croatia and a Brazilian guy. There were a tonne of foreigners there, and we actually got free tickets cause this American guy had two extra and just gave them to us. The fact that I didn't have to buy the ₩10,000 ticket prompted me to buy a ₩32,000 jersey but that's still pretty cheap. Photos below, and some gameplay footage:







Additional: We saw James (ex-Kim & Lee teacher from Australia) and his girlfriend Naomi (current Korean Kim & Lee teacher) at the game also, and ended up going to a cool dwaeji-galbi restaurant, followed by an arguably competitive doubles pool tournament at one of the numerous Pool Rooms in our area. Then we went home.. and here I am updating you on what's happening, at 3:17 am.

Tomorrow's agenda is Kim & Lee teachers intra-workplace soccer game (hopefully Koreans vs. Foreigners if we get enough people to show up). The most likely match will be Taylor vs. Colin as we seem to be the only confirmed guests to this event, though.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Min's Wedding & Legendary Karaoke Bus

So this weekend I went to a Korean wedding of a co-teacher (his Korean name is 캉민구, or Kang Min-gu, or simply Min, as we know him). It was held in a distant city called .. I think it was called Ondong but I'm not entirely sure. It was a four hour bus journey to get there. We (three other foreign teachers and I) noticed that the wedding itself was held in this giant "wedding factory" as Erika dubbed it, with numerous wedding halls and a giant furniture store downstairs. It was pretty impersonal. I'm racing through the description because the bus ride on the way back is really the most important part of this blog entry.


There were two buses heading out from Suwon, and midway through the journey, for some reason, most of the women and children left our bus and all the men from the other bus come onto ours. We didn't think much of this until a highly intoxicated Korean man approached us once the bus started moving, and urged us to sing for everyone on the karaoke machine. With much apprehension, confusion and broken English I ended up starting off the festivities with a performance of Wake Me Up Before You Go Go that resulted in tumultous cheering and the party REALLY getting started. The next two hours were devoted to drunken renditions of terrible, terrible Korean oldies tunes, that steadily got louder until all hell broke loose on the bus.


What happened next can only be described through video footage I managed to capture during this phenomenon. You'll notice that everyone on the bus is middle-aged, everyone is dancing and everyone is completely plastered. My friend Meredith is being propositioned by a Korean man that we believe had consumed well over three bottles of soju at this point. Also, keep in mind that the bus itself is speeding down the highway at 100 km/h as this is all going on.


I have to admit this is the first time I've been on a bus with disco lights.