Things kicked off on Friday night where we watched the opening match downtown. It was a good omen for the weekend as about 30 people rocked up, which is one of the biggest crowds id ever gone out with since id been here. The night was good and everyone was just frothing for Saturday to roll around.
When it did, we went to one of the local Universities to watch the game. It was being played on a big screen projector in an ampitheatre set up, which held about 5 thousand people i reckon. When we first arrived I just knew it was going to be insane. It was all dark and you could make out the red of the Devil horns some members of the crowd were wearing (Koreas mascot is the Red Devils) and the ampitheatre just rose up all around and imposingly enclosed the mad and crazy koreans. It was truly a an amazing sight and incredible atmosphere. The chanting had already begun when we arrived - mostly Daehan-minguk (clapclap clapclap clap) - and didnt stop the entire night. Literally. There was not a second of silence from the crowd. The Koreans were going histerical at the tiniest of things - the winger would pass the ball BACKWARDS to the full back and the crowd would go nuts. When the ball was anywhere within 25 metres of either goal, hysteria turned into manic schizophrenia and people were seriously having nervous breakdowns. In between the fits they managed to compose themselves and cheer or whack together those "thunder sticks" or noise makers that are exceedingly annoying. When the goals were scored obviously the crowd erupted, and I went idiot and ran onto the front stage with Korean Youths who were dancing and celebrating. The cheering of the Koreans in general was quite strange - it was 100% honest; they have massive pride in being Korean (like most people have with their country) and they were just expressing their pride in their country - but it comes off like alot of things in Korea - slightly cheezy and exagerrated. We Aussies have pride in our country but you would never see us cheering the way the Koreans did. All in all, it was a fantastic spectacle and I was happy to see the Koreans win - partly because i was rooting for them, and partly because I didnt want anyone to go home and kill themselves if they lost.
We rolled on into town to a favourite establishment of ours - Go West - and watched the 2nd game of the night. Halfway through the game and pretty much already massively pissed it dawned on us that it was still over 3 hours to the nights main event - USA v England. But like the troopers we are, we soldiered on staggered to Rock Bar for the finale of the night.
My allegiences for the game went something like this - I in no way wanted USA to win, but I also was not actively cheering for England. I just cant bring myself to cheer for either team. It would just go against every reason of my being. However, once the game started, and after seeing the following friends of mine turn into the ugliest of ugly Americans, I found myself hoping desperately that the Yanks would go down.
Now im all for dressing up, and to the best of my memory my Yankee friends werent being jackarses in any way (other than just being American), but what you cant see is the back of the shirt. Now, this shirt (and 2 others) had the English flag being utterly disgraced by the worst means possible. Absolutely unmentionable here. Once I saw these, I knew I couldnt let these guys win.
This is part of the crowd that enjoyed the match. We were well trashed at this point and quite a few were struggling big time. I remember watching the 1st half pretty closely and then not much of the second. I also remember seeing a few of the party passed out - one on his girlfriends shoulder and the other in his chair. One guy (standing up on the right in the red shirt) was completely out of it and ended up with dirty words and body parts drawn all over his face. Dont really need to talk about the outcome of the game, other than its fitting that the game was a draw, and the main focus of the night wasnt the result was it? I thought it was more about giving shit to the Yanks. When we left at 5:30 it was well bright outside and sleep was a welcome thought. Great night.
My male Co-Teacher took me out to his hometown after school last Tuesday. He is from a small, small, small village outside a small, small town about 40 minutes north of Jinju. Its in the mountains, very close to Jirisan, the biggest mountain on the mainland. He grew up in absolute poverty - his father was and still is a farmer, but true to Korean form, did everything he could to put his son through school and university. It paid off, as Mr. Lee is a deadset champion. I met his father, went to his old school, then drove back though the mountains. We took a drink from a "special" spring, which spews out some sort of "special" water. I dont really feel too different since i had the water but it did taste nice and cool. We took a look at some traditional Korean houses then went to get some dinner. This was good. Well, entertaining at least. We started off with fried fish - the same you would get with a typicall fish and chips in Oz - however this wasnt ordinary fried fish. Instead of having fried fish fillets, it was fried entire fish. Head, backbone, everything. Except maybe the guts coz I couldnt taste them. It tasted fine, like normal fish, and the bones were relatively soft, but not soft enough to not notice them completely. Then we had a fish stew. Again, it tasted fine; it was a nice tomato sauce and had potatoes sitting at the bottom. However, it was using the same fish as the first dish and these fish are literally the size of the poddy mullets we used to catch at Lake Cathie. You get the fish out of the stew and then pick the meat off the fish because the bones were to hard to eat. You probably got a mouthful of meat for each side of the fish, and it took about 2 minutes to extract said meat off the spine. It was a very picky and tedious meal and took some serious patience. I probably ended up having to pick 20 or 25 fish from the stew and spend about 45 minutes on the meal. Tasted good though. Only problem with the day was I didnt have my camera as it was an impromptu adventure. Really fun though.
Aiiiiiiiiiiight, til next time
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