"Shouting Korea" World Cup

"Fighting Korea" - the "Red Devils"

The Ulsan Bellinghamers in our jersey's getting ready to watch the game!

I have officially decided I will do everything I can to never watch the World Cup in the States ever again. I think I can get an international trip in every 4 years...? The World Cup Fever is absolutely incredible here! You can't go anywhere without seeing people wearing the South Korea teams shirts, devil horns (the team is known as the "red devils"), flag or some kind of World Cup red devils paraphernalia, which is sold in EVERY store from big department stores to the random street corner stores (even little vendors on the side of the street). They are constantly busting out Korean team songs and chants on TV...so many commercials have to do with the World Cup. This was before the games even started. Now that they have begun, replays of the game are played on TV's everywhere.

After staying up the previous night to watch the first World Cup game, South Africa vs. Mexico, I went to watch the game with a group of friends down by the Taehwa River. There was a huge stage set up with 3 jumbo screens and then another jumbo screened off to the side. Thousands of people were down there watching the game. Before the game there were a bunch of performances including some Korean rock group. Then a group came out to to sing a Korean fight song and get the crowd chanting. The game was extremely excited, the energy was fantastic! They were so into it. After each goal fireworks went off and people were jumping up and cheering! Koreans by the way are extremely friendly and love to share as well. One woman saw that I had a beer and gave me some dried squid jerky to go with it. I didn't want to be rude so obviously took it and ate a little bit "accidentally" dropping pieces here and there. Then they started sharing their beer with us and more squid jerky, which we promptly handed to Ryan who enjoyed it. It's really not that bad, just fishy. One of the coolest parts was there were tons of people sitting down who couldn't see the jumbo screens and were just watching the game from their own TV's on their phones! They really just came out to support the team and be in that environment. Even when it started raining a bit, there weren't that many people that left! Korea ended up winning 2-0 and the celebrating has continued on.

After the Korea game we moved to the Golden Eagle Pub to watch the Argentina vs. Nigeria game at 11:30 and then stayed there (and barely awake) to watch the USA vs. England game that started at 3:30 am. I left the bar to daylight and finally went to bed around 6 am on Sunday.

The next game is this Thursday, luckily at 8:30 pm again. They are opening up the big soccer stadium where the Ulsan Tigers play for people to go in for free and watch the games (one of the reasons i love watching the World Cup in Korea....they're not trying to make money off of everything). You can take in your own food and drinks too! I can't wait!!! It will be a good lead to my World Cup lesson I will be teaching the 5th grade on Thursday : ) I already did two lessons for the after school classes before the World Cup started too.

Hopefully South Korea will pull through, and I really hope USA starts looking a little better! Either way, I am loving watching the World Cup here....just wish the games weren't from 8:30 pm until 5:30 am....it's a little rough. : P

Some of the group in front of the stage....after the big win!
Ryan and Hannah with our beer and dried squid jerky...mmmmm
Even when it started to rain, spirits were still high!

GO KOREA!!!

the last few weeks

I actually forgot the password to my blog and haven't been able to access it for a little while, not to mention I have been extremely busy with school, visitors, and enjoying life! I called in sick today, figured it was a good time to update the blog

Open Classes - Once a semester we have class that is open to parents, teachers, the vice principal and principal. The teachers seem to be pretty terrified of them and I got a little nervous at first. Then, I just decided to treat it like any other class. My class with Kimmie went pretty well, but was a little rushed...may have had a bit too much planned. It was still fun. The class with Sam went REALLY well though. I think because we really didn't change much, it just seemed like any other day and we were both pretty comfortable. I guess the Vice Principal complimented our class and said something to the extent that I look comfortable and am a good teacher. That was really nice! The only part I did not enjoy too much was just having it video taped...I'm already not a huge fan of being up in front of the camera or people...except when it comes to teaching, I always seem to feel pretty confident and comfortable with that. All in all, I had a lot of fun with the open classes though!

Shay's visit - Shay came to visit for 17 days, which went by way too quickly! I had a lot of work to do and was at school from around 8:30 am – 6:45 pm. The first weekend she was here we went to the Performing Arts festival in Busan and caught two shows. They were both good and very interesting. The first one, Bertrand’s Toys, was from a Russian theatre group. This one was a bit scary actually, which was what they were trying to invoke. The second one was very random and I believe was Korean. Parts of it were funny, others almost sad, it was just very interesting. The next day Shay and I ventured to Boemoesa Temple which was absolutely amazing! We ended up doing this hike up to the top of the mountain without planning on it just because we wanted to see the view. Well worth the physical pain and weird looks from all the Koreans, we weren’t exactly in “hiking” attire. Literally at the top of the mountain I had one Korean man take a lot of pictures of my feet because I was wearing sandals on this pretty intense hike. I got many comments from the Koreans on my “slippers” that I wore hiking. Hahaha it was actually really funny. During the week Shay kind of did her own thing, which was nice because I didn’t have to worry about not being around. She even had dinner made for me a couple times when I got home from work!!! The last weekend she was here we went to Seoul. I had been waiting to go until she got here because it isn’t too cheap to get there. The first night it took us forever to find a hostel…there ended up being a very popular Korean pop artist show that weekend and apparently people from around the world came to see it. We spent the whole next day going from one place to the next and trying to fit in as much as possible. It was really great though. We went to Namdaemun (kinda…they were doing renovations on it due to a recent fire…so we didn’t really get to see it : ( sad day), the Namdaemun market, Dongdaemun, Insa-dong (got some fantastic Indian food there), Changdeokgung Palace, and then out at night to meet up with some old friend’s and go to the noraebang to do some karaoke! Sadly, she left me the next morning and I made my way back to my lonely apartment the next morning. Ryan and I had a little trouble getting back…taking the subway the wrong way and being extremely exhausted, it was actually pretty entertaining. WHOOPSI!

What else has been going on – The weekend after Shay’s visit was my co-teachers wedding. It was very different. The wedding was in a convention type center and there were just back-to-back weddings in these two rooms across from each other. You could hear the other wedding going on and there were so many people there, so if you didn’t get a seat or there was no room to stand in the room where the wedding was happening you could stand outside and watch it on a jumbo screen. Everyone talks during the wedding too. It was definitely fun to watch and Kimmie looked gorgeous! The next day I went to Busan to watch the Busan soccer game and finally go to the aquarium. The game was great fun, but the aquarium was a bit depressing….the tanks were way too small for most of the animals. It’s just easy to tell sometimes the different relationships we have with animals compared to other places. I’m definitely going to try and do the “shark” dive they have with the nurse sharks soon though. Baby steps to the sharks in the wild I guess…?

Besides that no major events, just been spending a lot of time at Jinha and Haeundae beaches whenever the weather is nice and I’m not at school. Went to the Sand Festival in Busan to see some pretty cool sand sculptures and a couple performances. Definitely did some sand sledding down a big mound of sand…oh ya, it was me, Melvin, and a bunch of kids. At least Melvin did the sand boarding.

Hannah and I have been trying to do some shopping for summer clothes. It is getting very hot and ridiculously humid….I am not going to enjoy this. Problem is all of the skirts and dresses are WAY too short for me. It seems Koreans have shorter legs : P should be an interesting summer!

School – classes are still going well. I love my after school kids. It’s nice to be able to build a relationship with some students. The during school classes are just so quick and I only see each grade once or twice a week. It’s been a lot of fun lately, at the same time, I am definitely ready for a break! Soon enough!

That’s all for now! I’ll work on keeping this updated now that I remembered my username and password!

Cheers!