These past two weekends have been filled with all sorts of Seoul adventures!!!
My coworker, Amy, invited me to go to a KMLBA baseball game. Korean Major League Baseball. We went to go see the Doosan Bears versus LG Twins.
When we got to the stadium I was surprised to see so many people hauling in bags of food an booze. Most major games that I have ever been to have a strict no outside food or drink rule. Not Korea. They encourage you to bring in your own food, AND your own booze!
No more 6 dowla hotdogs, and 14 dowla beer… no no. We were meeting two of Amys friends. They brought the beer, we brought the fried chicken we bought from a man on the stairs of the subway (sanitation absolutely not being a factor in our decision of where to buy chicken!).
Aside from being able to bring in your own supply stock, the game was unlike any other baseball game I have seen before! There are Korean cheerleaders on each side. They direct full blown cheers by the stands. Some include clapping, while others are perfectly choreographed songs! Each player has their own cheer, to a tune of a popular song, and each time they are up to bat, thousands of people break out and sing this diddy!
I have never had so much fun watching a baseball game! Good food, good people, and more entertainment in the stands than on the field! And all this for only 8,000 won! I have decided Doosan Bears are “my team” because they have some pretty cute players, (and really how else would I decide!) and because their home field is in Seoul, only an hours journey from my place! I will defiantly be going back!
In between weekends I may have worn finger moustaches (it’s a full blown addiction) and tried to catch a lobster out of a crane.
While some of you are probably thinking, what? I will go into small detail about the event because of the cruel and unusual punishment I felt for this poor crustacean.
Normal crane machines litter the streets of Korea. While most of them have your standard teddy bears, small toys, candy, chips… some are actually filled with more unique items like giant lighters, bb guns, remote control cars, even alarm clocks. However, the weirdest one I have ever encountered was this:
A lobster, in his poor shallow box, waiting to be lifted from the crane. While there was promise of garlic butter if he was caught, I felt so bad lifting up this poor creature only to drop him back into the one foot shoe box that he was now living in. Don’t get me wrong, I love lobster! But trying to catch one from a crane seemed so cruel, I had to stop. Having said that it was definetly on of the most random things I have done to this day in Korea!
This Saturday I went on a hike with my friend. She is part of a gym and they were planning a weekend hike. She said it would be mostly ajimas and ajishies (older Korean women and men), but I am almost always down for a hike! Plus its great to meet new people no matter how old they are, and since the weather is getting nicer I relish the idea of being outside!
So 11 of us met at the station and travelled to Sadang, about 45 minutes away from Gojan. I know through my adult students that Trekking or Mountain Hiking is a really popular sport for older Korean people but I had no idea of popular. As we started our hike, we were lead in a group stretch, and I started to think “what did I get myself into”? Everyone was decked out in their gear, poles in hand, gloves and waterproof boots and jackets.
Before we started the hike, I saw a man carrying a five year old on his back, so I assumed if he could do this hike, with a 5 year old strapped to him, I could definitely do it! But man, this hike was no joke! As we started to climb, I got the first actually view of Seoul since I have been here. It was a beautiful day, but the yellow dust from Asia makes the sky foggy around this time of year. It was amazing to see apartments literally for miles and miles, even in the distance. It’s sometimes hard to understand just how many people live in this small country until you see something like that.
Actually it was not too hot, which made the hike easier! Some parts were really difficult, including rope climbing, a thousand stairs and some serious rock climbing! But I made it! At each check point, I figured we must be getting closer! But at each peak, we could see another in the distance!
We stopped, eating small oranges (which they eat with the peel on. I thought it was really bizarre, but didn’t want to be the weirdo peeling the miniature orange so I ate it), skin, seeds, green bit and all.
Finally, success!! We made it to the top, were they was an observatory, and hundreds of people! There were probably over a thousand people hiking the mountain that day! Most of them middle aged Koreans! We stopped on our way down for lunch. Amy asked me what I would take for lunch on a hike in Canada, and I said probably sandwiches, fruits, nuts, granola bars, standard lunch food. In Korea we ate kimbob, kimchi, rice and seaweed, soup, tofu salad and strawberries.
Even though Amy was there, and acted as my translator, this was the first time since I have been in Korea that I felt like an exchange student! The people we went on a hike with were so nice, but they spoke almost no English, and my Korean is only basic, so there were only so many things I could say! But a language barrier doesn’t mask kindness. Even though it was hard to understand each other, these people were so welcoming to me, and so nice! You wouldn’t believe how far hand gestures and smiles go when you’re having conversation consists of two languages that the other one doesn’t understand!
The whole hike took us about 6 hours. Three hours up, an hour for lunch, 2 hours down. We stopped on the way down to put our feet in the stream. I was apprehensive, because I thought I might get blisters from walking in wet socks, but it was surprisingly refreshing.
The spring seems to be grabbing people out of their one room apartments and into the fresh air! Its only so long before the cherry blossoms start to bloom and I can retire my winter jacket!
