...BUT a fun one all the same!
I'm slightly lagging with the latest entry to my blog so I do appologise but I didn't get back until late last night and I've had plenty to keep me busy this evening which has meant that I will probably end up producing this in two parts as I'm sure tiredness will defeat me after a while.
This weekend has been more action packed than usual and it's been great. I have been getting upto plenty of things and it feels like I have been more of a tourist this weekend than a citizen, which is something that hasn't happened to often in the last couple of weeks.
On friday when I finished I popped down the road to post a letter, only to discover, to everyones horror when I told them that the galbi restaurant we usually head to on a friday was closed. My excellent hangul abilities manage to decypher the banner hanging in front of the door, but sadly there were no English words translated in to Korean, meaning I couldn't understand a single thing what it was on about. Except the bit in the middle which said '19/9' which I take it is their re-opening date.
If you went down the street where I live you would see that competition is fierce, especially when it comes to galbi, but I will be mightily surprised if this place has actually closed down because it always seemed to be doing such good business, it's one of a number of places down our street which is as busy at 3am as it is as 10pm when we go in there!
My boss read the sign and suggested that it is closed to refurbishments and that they will be re-opening with a different name and a few new specials but hopefully it will be the same in spirit. With the same delicious food and the same people who work there that hook us up with extras and freebees everytime we go in. Only time will tell....
You're sure to find out if it's not though as this blog may have a slightly less happy tone to it!
Disaster aside we headed to another galbi restaurant further down the road, one which I actually thought was pretty decent but the guys weren't too impressed when I tried to make a claim for this place being a potential new hang out! None of us were feeling in the mood to really hang out in the evening so I had a bit of an earlier one than usual for a friday night as was actually pretty well rested by the time it came to getting up on Saturday morning.
We headed to 'The Yuk' for some food and as we were walking past the bus stops we noticed a stand of the dancing pororo creatures which had caught my attention and I wished I had brought last weekend while I was in Hongdae. This time we didn't spend a moment messing around and we brought a complete set which has actually yet to be tested.
Laughing to ourselves that we had actually been able to purchase them was only topped off by seeing some girl and her friend fall over a two foot by two foot concrete pillar which was in the middle of the street!
Where it's two men taking their shirts off and fighting, dancing critters, people trying to 'sell' us religion or people falling over, there is always something funny or strange happening when we go to Suwon station thats for sure.
Last weekend whilst we were in Hongdae, we'd seen posters for an 'NBA Generations' game which was in Jamsil this weekend. And all three of us being big basketball fans we decided to head down and check it out. I guess the NBA, like most sports organisations, is trying to break into the Asian market so this year for the first time they decided to bring a bunch of NBA D leaguers and mesh them with a team of four hall of famers to take on the Korean Basketball League Allstars.
A hilarious prospect on paper seeing three players who retired in the mid to late 90's and one guy who retired a few years ago taking on some sprightly and energetic Asian players in an exibition game, it turned out to be as funny in real life as we thought it might be.
'Sports Complex' where we headed to is just outside Seoul and near a place called Jamsil which is where the 'Olympic Village' was for the 1988 games which were held here. Making ourway through the ridiculously crowded subway station and the 'nut to butt' experience of the 'circle line' which is the subway line running through the middle of Seoul we found ourselves following a huge crowd of people going to watch the game.
'Sports Complex' as the name suggests housed a few olympic events and was the main location for all the track events, swimming, basketball, boxing and also has a baseball stadium where two of the five teams in Seoul play.
As we walked to the gym there was a montage of Korean athletes who were successful at the Olympics (all the way through to Athens) and also a list of every single person who won a medal at the Seoul games carved on a stone in the middle. it was pretty cool actually.
We managed to negotiate our way past a few ticket touts who tried to sell is a few tickets at a 'cheap price' (business sense tells me they were either lying or making a loss!) and we found our way to the top tier of the stand where our seats were. Within two minutes of sitting down we thought we'd done something wrong as some guy tapped us on the shoulder and in broken English told us that we were able to move. We later discovered that this was because there were some spare seats further down and not because we'd broken any rules!
We had a decent view about five rows back from the courtside seats and the gym wasn't that full anyway so there was plenty of space. The game itself was pretty inconcequential as the Korean team, as expected, won in a blow out. Though mind you if they couldn't beat a team which had at least three players who were out of shape on the floor at all times, they should probably have given up right there and then.
It was an extremely strange experience and honstely something I never thought i would be doing. I am a big basketball fan and although I don't know a great deal about the history of the game seeing the all time leading scorer in NBA history sitting about twenty foot away from me on the bench was pretty incredible. That combined with Vlade Divac, Dominique Wilkins, Robert Horry and Tim Hardaway all virtually being at touching distance when they were on the floor was one of the more memorable moments of my time in Korea.
It was a strange juxtaposition being in an arena full of Koreans but seeing some people I have only ever seen on the TV or on video performing in front of me. I'm a big 'live sports' person and even if the standard wasn't the highest, that was enough to leave me happy that day.
Slightly disappointed that the New Jersey Nets cheerleading team hadn't managed to pick our goofy faces out in the crowd when they were throwing t-shirts and posters out, me and Charlie decided to take matters into our own hands by swiping one of the arena wall on the way out.
It was pretty funny as many Korean's started to realise it was a good idea and followed suit by doing the same so we didn't feel so bad!!!1
We headed back to Suwon and on the way home our friend Marie text us asking if we wanted to head out for a few drinks that evening to meet her and a couple of her friends. So we got back to our rooms had a rest and then decided to go eat and go meet them in Lao bar which is just near Suwon station (the place last time where during the fire show we saw a group of people get covered in oragnge juice!)
Although we didn't see such hilarity this time it was good to meet up with some new people and also I think it has been nearly three months since we met up with Marie as either her or us have been busy whenever we've tried to do it before. We had a couple of games of darts and then at about one the three of us decided to call it a night as Charlie had plans for the next day and I was feeling pretty tired.
Another refreshing nights sleep followed and as my game of football had been cancelled on thursday I had the whole day to myself. As we didn't spend too much time in Jamsil before or after the game, but there were plenty of cool things to see, I decided to get the subway back into Seoul and take a look round to see what else there was. I figured that they did tours of all the stadia and stuff and I knew it would fill up some time before the evening when we were going to see the Suwon Bluewings play.
I got some lunch and then went and caught the subway which took about an hour or so to get me back to 'Sports Complex'. One of the two baseball teams who play at the stadium right there were playing that afternoon so I got about as far into the stadium as I could without a ticket, took a few pictures and then went to see what else I could do.
I visited the boxing arena, the swimming venue and also the hockey stadium which is now open to the public but it was pretty the Olympic Stadium which interested me the most. First I walked around the outside to the 'auxilary' stadium where athletes were allowed to warm up during the Olympics and also where some of the field events took place. I continued to walk around the outside of the stadium but was disappointed to see that I couldn't even get close to going inside because all the gates were locked.
I'm not entirely sure what was going on but I think Seoul is trying to hold the Asian games or something and are doing up their stadium because builders were at work in there as I walked further round, and thanks to some stelthy tactics and the door being left open I snuck through and open gate and into the arena.
With the place to myself and no idea of how long I had before someone saw me I obviously went up into the stands and took a few pictures before deciding to head to the track for a walk around and also to see the pitch which sits in the middle.
I managed to take a few good pictures before I heard people talking pretty close by so looking for the gate that I got in through I scampered back up the stairs and carried on walking around the outside as if I hadn't even noticed the open gate.
A bit further round there was another open space which I was able to sneak into which is where the press box was so that was pretty cool to be up there, somewhere I hope to be able to be in a few years, without sneaking in if possible!
Once I felt I had outstayed my welcome and done enough things I probably shouldn't have been doing and visited enough places that I shouldn't have been able to I headed back to Suwon and agreed to meet up with everyone at the station so we could get the bus. Last time we went to see the Bluewings we had Hans with us but this time we were very much on our own with just me, Kevin, Alex, Marie and Marie's friend Kerry to try and work out what was going on.
Thankfully it was just a case of getting one bus up there and we managed pretty easily which was cool. We arrived perfectly ontime and brought some seats in the same section of the crowd that we headed to before.
Suwon were playing Gangwon this week who, as a little research was able to uncover, are actually pretty decent. Quite surprsing then when the 14th placed Bluewings netted first! Hoping for more goals we weren't disappointed as before half time we saw two more and then in the second half we saw three more as the game ended in a 3-3 draw with Suwon scoring in the last minute and going very close in injury time.
It was a throughly enjoyable game and again for 10,000 won (£5 to you and me) it was money well spent. Especially to see six goals!
We tried for an eternity to get a cab back to the station and about thirty minutes later me and Kevin decided that we would go back and get some food as all the waiting had made us starving (a hunger which not even the chicken at half time could cure!)
We got some grub and then headed back to our houses throughly tired and not altogether ready to be going back to work today...thankfully I survived!
As previously mentioned I had a fun-filled and very sport orientated weekend which suited me just fine. Sadly today we had to say goodbye to one of our teachers, Josh, whose year contract was up today and who is heading back to America this week so there's just the three of us now at Talkster fighting to foreign fight!
Anyway guys, I've had plenty to blog about this week and writing about it has made me very sleepy, so even though I've made it on one go I think it is definately time for me to head to bed. Keep an eye out for pictures and videos which will be posted to both my sites this week...just haven't quite got round to it yet!
Take care
Ben
Success is simple. Do what's right, the right way, at the right time.
Arnold H. Glasow
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