Being here is like redoing college, except teaching instead of studying

On Friday night I met some people for drinks at Urban Bar. Then we went to dinner at a meat place. It was nice because it was still a small group, but had a few people I don't get to see often so it was nice to talk with them. After that we all went to a bar called Soundgarden. There is a group of girls in Jinju doing a version of the Vagina Monologues to benefit the local YWCA. I think there are other groups in other cities doing similar readings. The girls were holding a benefit for the benefit - in other words, they had some local bands (and some foreigners) play and we gave donations. They raised enough money to cover the cost to book the stage and to make flyers, so that was good. It was a fun night - there were a lot of people.

Ally and Sophia (she's the American-Korea I talked about before...and a black belt in tae kwon do)

Liezle, Kyle, Clara (Liezle's co teacher), Cindy, Me

Liezle's co-teacher is named Keung He (or something like that) but her facebook name is Clara. I had met her once before and she is nice, but she's not really fluent in English It's good, but not great. She came out with Liezle after work (they finish earlier than me every night except Friday) and met us at the bar. I finished one drink and as I was ordering another I heard her gasp. I then told Liezle, "I think you co-worker thinks I'm a lush (which I then had to explain to her because they don't use that term in South Africa)". A few minutes later Liezle taps me on the shoulder and goes, "Keung He wants to know if you're strong to alcohol" and started laughing. Apparently when Liezle ordered another drink too she asked if I was "strong to alcohol" meaning tolerant. I was like, yea, I'm ok. So now Liezle and I started using "strong to alcohol". I'm bringing that back with me.

Marzia, Ally, Me

On Saturday, I got up relatively early and met Liezle at the local bus stop. Then we met another group of about 15 people at the city bus stop. We all got on a bus to Daegu. A guy name Rob (who oddly enough lived near our house in Jersey - his best friend's mom is now the principal of my elementary school), had a birthday on Sunday. His family has season tickets to the Yankees and has gone to a baseball game every year for his birthday and he wanted to carry on that tradition. So he sent out a facebook message to most foreigners in Jinju. Like I said, about 15 or so got on the early bus. There were probably 30 when all was said and done. We got to Daegu around 1. We walked to the stadium and got tickets (which were fairly cheap, like $8). The "football" (soccer) stadium and the baseball stadium are right next to each other.


Fountain in front of stadiums



Sign across the street from the stadium



Soccer ball flower pots

Then we went to lunch at a Chinese place. It was kind of funny because we ended up in 2 tables - one had lots of people and ours had 6. The big group just ordered small portions of rice and our table had chicken and red peppers, sweet and sour pork, fried rice and noodles. We also had soju. They made fun of us at first for being like the quiet kids table, but when our food came they were all jealous.

Fried rice with black bean sauce on it

Fried rice pre-bean sauce

Red pepper chicken

Our lunch group - Cindy, Darragh, me, Jung wha, Matt (Liezle took the picture)

I warned my group that I take pictures of food all the time, so they were prepared when all the dishes came out. I think I might have mentioned before that when Koreans do fried rice, it's really cooked rice with a fried egg on the top of it. Then they give you a bowl of black bean sauce to pour on it. That's what the first 2 pictures are. On the side of the plate there is cabbage salad with ketchup.

After lunch we walked back to the stadium and put our stuff down. Our group left a little bit later then the big group (because we had real food), so we took out time getting back over because we knew people were saving us seats. Outside of the stadium was very crowded because I think players will sign autographs before the game. There were lines of people and we just walked past them. We also took pictures with the mascots. My face looks like that because I was the first one to get my picture taken, and he originally just put his arm around me, then right when Liezle snapped the picture, he hugged me with both arms and it surprised me. After we walked in and dropped off our bags, 4 of us (me, Liezle, a girl named Cindy from Washington state and a guy from Ireland named Darragh) left and walked to Emart for supplies.

Logo on stadium wall

Early group saving seats

Field once fans started arriving

About half of the Jinju crowd

Cindy and the lion



A lady lion (which I think is actually a man)



Lion hug

Baseball games in Korea are awesome - you can leave the stadium and return with a stamp. You can also bring in your own food and alcohol as long as it's plastic bottles. There were people carring in boxes of chicken and whole pizzas. We just got drinks, lots of drinks. I had just met Cindy the weekend before, but she is really nice and I sat next to her most of the game. The game is played the same way as American baseball, but they have cheerleaders. I think this stadium is small compared to others, so the cheering wasn't as good according to the one Korean who came with us. We went to Citizen's Stadium to watch the Samsung Lions (home team) play the Doosan Bears (away team). In the middle of the 6th inning the power went out in the stadium. It came on and went out again for about 20 minutes and we decided to call it and left. We drank mainly soju and fanta (orange and pineapple), but we also had small glasses of bokbunjajoo, a black raspberry wine. They have different varities using different berries. It is very sweet and doesn't have the vinegar aftertaste that I don't like about wine. Wine people would probably hate this stuff.



The 4 lions between innings using a t-shirt gun to throw out hand warmers

We then went to check into a hotel near the subway station so we could get home easier the next day. Some people split off at that point and went to different hotels. A group of about 15 people went to our hotel, the Grand Motel. As you can see, the room, which wasn't huge, had at least 5 different wallpapers. I stayed in a room with Cindy, Liezle and Jung wha (the Korean). She goes to my church and I've met her a couple of times. She's really nice. She said she liked spending time in our room because most of the foreigers she knows are guys and she doesn't get to hear alot of girl talk. After we checked in a freshened up, we went out on the town. And that will be another post.


View from the door



View from the couch