Though Korea made an exit in the first round of the elimination stage, watching has been lots of fun. Because I have devoted most of my weekends to watching soccer and staying up into the wee hours of the morning, I have not had time for as many cultural/historical excursions this month. The way I see it though, watching the World Cup in a country that cares about soccer is a cultural event unlike any other.
Celebrating Victory Over Greece
South Korea's first game was against Greece. We decided to try to watch the game at a bar in the midst of frantic Koreans instead of watching at any of our places. About an hour or an hour and a half before game time we set out to find a bar. Each bar we found was "reservation only." There are at least a hundred bars/pubs/Korean BBQ joints close to the area I live, and they were all booked. Most had signs out front in Korean, but we quickly figured out that these signs were saying that there was no room. After searching for an hour, game time was quickly approaching, so we settled on an expat bar near in our area. We watched Korea's first game with a bunch of other white people who were all cheering for Korea. It was fun, but naturally atmosphere wasn't quite what we had hoped.
Korea knocked off Greece 2-0, and chaos ensued. Everyone poured into the streets simultaneously to celebrate. We were all wearing our Korean team garb, which amused every Korean that walked by us. Many slapped us high fives as we passed. We participated in and even started chants of "Dae Han Min Guk" (South Korea in Korean).
Immediately after the game people took over the main street passing through my neighborhood, a five-lane-on-each-side boulevard. Traffic stopped and one guy even climbed on top of a bus. Unfortunately, the picture I snapped didn't turn out well, but I got an OK picture of an imitator who climbed on a bus stop.
We took some time to enjoy the celebration, but had to change at get ready for US-England, but more on that later.
Determined not to make the same mistake as the Greece game, we decided to watch the Korea-Argentina at an outdoor venue a couple stops down the subway. On the way to the subway station, we passed a promotion for Max Beer (a Korean beer). When Koreans promote a product they have a tendency to do these over-the-top, grassroots promotions. Beer companies, even before the World Cup, lead small parades featuring 15-20 member marching bands and beautiful women. This particular promotion was particularly outlandish, but lots of fun.
We watched the game outside COEX, which is a massive underground mall near Seoul's World Trade Center. A five lane boulevard similar to the one near my house was entirely blocked off to form a sitting area, but we found a nice spot to stand on high ground. As far as the eye could see people were dressed in red and several giant TV screens were set up specifically for the game.
Because red is one of their colors, many Koreans have taken to wearing Halloween-style devil horns that light up when you put them one your head.
Unfortunately, South Korea was clobbered by Argentina, 4-1. I missed the Nigeria game because it was on at 3:30 AM on a school night, but a 2-2 tie sent South Korea to the next round.
Uruguay Game
Despite bad weather, we returned to COEX to watch Korea take on Urugauy. Many Koreans had bought ponchos, but the weather cleared up as the game started.
This time, we found a spot in front of one of the giant television screens mounted on a building. There are literally tons of these screen mounted buildings in Seoul, and when the World Cup is not on, they run advertisements.
The crowd erupted when Korea scored to tie the game at one, but that was their only goal and Korea was eliminated with a 2-1 loss.
US-England
On the second day of festivities, after watching Korea play, we headed to the foreigners' neighborhood called Itaewon. We watched US-England at an expat bar that had a good mix of Americans and Brits. The game started at 3:30 AM, and I'm sure all of you know the result. One of the other teachers from Canada has English parents, so he was pretty upset. Two grown Englishmen were so angry that they almost got in a fight with each other (I'm sure that would not have happened had England been ahead). By the time the game was over it was as bright as day. It's not the best feeling in the world to be leaving a bar when it is bright out, but I had bracketed off the entire next day to sleep. We stopped at McDonalds for breakfast before heading home, but I was disappointed to learn that Korean McDonald's don't have biscuits or McGriddles. I guess corn syrup and maple flavoring infused breakfast sandwiches haven't caught on here yet.
My Class Catches World Cup Fever
In the course of one weekend (the weekend of the opener when Korea beat Greece 2-0) my kids went from not knowing what the World Cup was to being soccer crazy. For the past month, they have been playing soccer with a balloon during play time. The game is very slow paced (balloons don't travel fast) and they all follow the balloon around in a huge clump. If I'm not busy grading or preparing lessons sometimes I will jump in and say, "I'm Nigeria!" (or whomever the next opponent is).
Dominic makes a move.
Christine with the save!I will be very busy over the next three weeks. Next weekend I am going to Mudfest and the next week I am headed to Japan for a nine day vacation. I will be sure to post after each event.
