Korean 4th of July

Well, my first ever Indepedence Day outside of U.S. borders was a great one. I had such a great time yesterday that I felt a blog was in order. I also managed to take some pictures so I'll post those at the end of the blog.

First, I have to introduce a new character into the blog. Han Sang Hyun (Hans for short) is the assistant manager of the local Baskin Robbins. We've recently become good friends with him and have been hanging out with him a fair bit outside the confines of our frequent ice cream runs. He is easily one of the 5 nicest people I've ever met. This guy is literally bending over backwards to make sure we're taken care of and we all sincerely appreciate his efforts. It is so cool to think we made such a good friend just because we like ice cream and we speak English.

Hans is a huge soccer fan, so he and Ben are always talking about soccer when we go get ice cream. About a month ago he suggested we should all go to a Suwon Bluewings game together. We settled on going yesterday because in Korea July 4th is just the day between July 3rd and 5th. Hans did a great job of planning out the whole day for us. We met up with Hans at BR wearing our blue shirts (obviously have to look like true fans) and then set off to get some food before the game.

Another side story: one of our favorite restaurants suddenly closed about 2 weeks ago. One day we showed up and it was boarded up. Now it is some kind of lotion store. We were devastated. They served one of our favorite Korean foods and Ben, Charlie, and myself have all been craving dak galbi something awful ever since. Well, luckily our boy Hans was able to show us another dak galbi restaurant. It may sound crazy, but this was easily one of the highlights of the day for me. I can now sleep easily knowing we'll be able to get out weekly dak galbi fix again.

Oh, I should do a roll call of the day's adventure. The group consisted of myself, Charlie, Ben, Hans, Alex and Ian (Dad, don't worry, I now have pictures of everyone). So after we ate our delicous meal we wandered over to KFC to load up on some food for half-time. Hans had this huge duffel bag he lugged around all day that was full of everything we could ever want or need. He had bottles of water, soda, Suwon t-shirts, soccer scarfs, and now a family size bucket of chicken. Did I mention how nice of a guy he is? In Korea you can just carry in a huge duffel of food for yourself which is in stark contrast to the Big House where they basically cavity search you upon entering the place.

Next we jumped in some cabs and rolled over to the stadium. I must admit, I was quite impressed. The 44,000 seat stadium was really beautiful and for $8 we had pretty sweet seats in the "supporter" section. Now I'm not entirely familiar with the workings of professional soccer, but I do know the fans are pretty much lunatics and Suwon's fans were no exception. They stood, clapped, and chanted pretty much the whole game. We managed to work out a few of the chants despite our lack of Korean. Hans gave Ben and I the rundown of the players and who to watch out for which made me feel like a more legitimate fan. We got some giant bottles of beer for $4 and settled down to watch the Bluewings take on Seongnam. The weather was absolutely perfect and we all were grinning ear to ear.

Again, I know next to nothing about soccer but Ben is pretty much 'The Schwab' of 'football' so I will default to his judgment on the level of play. The teams were certainly competitive but the game itself wasn't very sharp. Granted, most of my soccer watching is done on the International level at the World Cup so I should probably hold these guys to a lower standard. They didn't play much defense and basically just sprinted up and down the pitch the entire game, which I suppose was more exciting than the usual chess match nature of soccer. Suwon had a new Brazilian player playing in his first game and he happened to score the game's only goal. It was quite comical though. He was breaking down the field looking over his shoulder for the ball when it shockingly hit up directly in the back of the head. He regained his composure, broke in, and scored. Even Hans admitted it was quite a lucky goal. The fans went apeshit and all was well with the world.

Now I think soccer is a great game but I have one major complaint: the flopping. It seemed that every 5 minutes someone would be on the ground rolling around in pain. They'd stop the game, the trainer would run out, a golf cart would carry them off, and then 2 minutes later they're back in the game perfectly fine. It is all just a giant show to try and draw penalties but it seems quite ridiculous to me. It was so annoying to interrupt the flow of the game just so some asshole could pretend to be hurt.

It is worth mentioning that several Korean people asked to take pictures with us at the game as though we were celebrities. I don't think this occurance will ever stop being funny and awkward. First these high school boys down the row from us asked to take a picture with Alex. I mean, he's just sitting there watching the game, why would anyone want a picture with him? Then after the game we were down in the front row taking pictures near the field and these Koreans walked up and asked to snap a few pictures with us. Fair enough, let's take some more celebrity photos with strangers.

After the game we came back to the neighborhood and had some beers at the Ice Pub where we drank with Hans last week. A good time was had by all. After that Hans wanted to see our humble abodes so he came back and checked out our apartments and hung out playing video games with us.

All in all, probably one of my more memorable and enjoyable 4th of Julys. Great weather, exciting soccer, delicous food, cold beers, and fantastic company; what more could a guy ask for?