THE GAME
I watched the game at Antonio's place. We started watching classic games from the rivalry that he had downloaded at 4 PM and continued to do so until College Game Day started at midnight. We watched the game live, through all the ups and downs, our screams and cheers probably annoying Antonio's neighbors. I can't find words to express the joy I felt after Avery picked off Baxton Miller. It may have been the single happiest moment of my life to date. Sure, the mid-late 90s were awesome, but I didn't appreciate it as much back then. I missed home more than ever before that day. I would have given anything to be back in Ann Arbor for just a night. Antonio and I made the best of it with some celebratory shots, and, following a power nap, headed out to watch the game again on replay at a Western-style sports bar.
Halloween
I think I mentioned in last year's autumn post that Koreans celebrate Halloween the way Americans celebrate Cinco de Mayo. For most of them it's essentially meaningless, but a select few use it as an excuse to have a good time. A few stores and restaurants use it for promotions, and all of the English kindergartens celebrate it. As was the case last year, most girls had incredibly boring and unoriginal princess costumes. Also like last year, I ended up with two Snow Whites in one class. Most boys chose to dress up as something that could either kill you or severely maim you. Much more interesting!
Ricky (left) was the blue Power Ranger and Jae Yong (right) was Optimus Prime. Both are in Pine Class (my partner class).
Junho's policeman costume was probably the most original in either class. Alexa and I went as bacon and eggs. Once the costume idea was decided upon, it was not necessary to discuss who got to be bacon.
Gwanaksan
As mentioned in many previous posts, great hiking is only a metro ride away any time you are in Seoul. This fall Alexa and I decided to tackle Gwanaksan, a mountain just southwest of our home. We went in late October when the colors are perfect. At the peak of the mountain is a cliff-side Buddhist temple. Before embarking on our hike we stopped at our favorite French bakery in Seoul to grab a baguette to go with the cheese we had for our picnic.
Mom and Dad Visit
Okay, we are back to September, and everything will be in roughly chronological order from here on out. My mom and dad visited for the first half of September, a visit planned to coincide with the Korean holiday of Chuseok. I greeted them at the airport, and we took the metro back to the city. I showed them to their hotel, or at least where the hotel was located on the map I'd printed off. After looking around for what felt like an hour, we called the hotel and found out that they were located two subway stops away. We hopped in a taxi and gave the driver the new address. After a rough start, we unwound with some Korean BBQ for dinner.
Bears vs. Twins
I used my mom and dad's visit as an excuse to do things I'd been wanting to do while in Korea but just hadn't gotten around to. One of the things at the top of the list was attending a baseball game. Baseball is quite popular in Korea, and while it doesn't compete with World Cup Fever, we had been told that games were quite exciting. Seoul has three teams in the league, and two of them share a stadium that's three or four subway stops away.
Antonio and I are both from Southeast Michigan and attended the same university, hence we share all the same favorite sports teams. We decided that rooting for different teams in the Korean Professional Baseball would make things more interesting and allow us to talk some smack to each other. We flipped a coin to decide which teams would become our favorites. I clearly won the toss because I ended up with the Doosan Bears, a team vastly superior to the LG Twins, as evidenced by their three KPB titles compared to the Twin's two.
Antonio and I are both from Southeast Michigan and attended the same university, hence we share all the same favorite sports teams. We decided that rooting for different teams in the Korean Professional Baseball would make things more interesting and allow us to talk some smack to each other. We flipped a coin to decide which teams would become our favorites. I clearly won the toss because I ended up with the Doosan Bears, a team vastly superior to the LG Twins, as evidenced by their three KPB titles compared to the Twin's two.
Each stadium is divided in two, one side for the home team and one for the visitors. For the game we attended, the Bears were visitors in their own stadium. I got our tickets in the Bears section. Each section has its own cheers, chants, traditions, and, most importantly cheerleaders. These highly motivational women do whatever it takes to lift the spirits of the mighty Doosan Bears.
The Doosan Bears controlled the play and clung to a 3-1 lead for the better part of the game. Then, in the bottom of the 8th, with a stroke of sheer luck, a Twins player hit a three run homer, a clear deviation from the mean. Antonio got the last laugh that tragic night, but the Doosan Bears shall rise again (side note: both teams failed to make the playoffs).
Chuseok Party with Mom and Dad
Mom and Dad were lucky enough to be in town for one of Korea's most important holidays, Chuseok. In case you forgot or didn't read my post last year, Chuseok is basically a Thanksgiving-like holiday, where Koreans give thanks to their ancestors for the bountiful harvest. They make rice cakes called songpyeon and dress in traditional hanboks. All of the kids showed up in their ornate hanboks, only to be immediately bribed by my mother: a hug for a lollipop. Mom also enjoyed reading the kids a story each day she visited, which of course was accompanied with more candy.
The kids decided it would be a good idea to make a lollipop for my dad out of blocks, then continued to think it would be a good idea for the rest of the day. Dad must have eaten 15-20 imaginary lollipops. Below on the right is a picture of my whole class in the hanboks.
Dad used his skills as a former soccer coach to try to teach the kids how to play a hacky-sack-like game. It took them a while to realize that they needed to wait until the ball was on its way down to kick upward. Towards the end of the day, my kids decided that Dad's white hair needed a little color. They pretended to use crayons to dye it for him. This was mortifying to one of my supervisors that walked by, but I explained to her that my parents were just having fun with the kids. Later, she quipped that the kids probably thought dad was a grandfather. Though it's not time for that yet, Mom and Dad got to practice what it was like to come to visit kids of mine, rile them up, spoil them, then leave for me to deal with. I think they have it down pretty well...
DMZ
Before coming to Korea, the only tourist destination in the country I was aware of was the DMZ. It was always at the top of my list of things to do, but it requires significant advanced planning, so for the first year it sat on the back burner. By the time my new contract started, I knew my parents were going to visit, so I saved a trip to the DMZ as something we could do together.
A month or two in advance I had to contact the USO (who runs the tours) and to reserve the spots. We had to show up on the military base a few hours before I usually wake up on the weekends. We boarded a bus and headed to the DMZ. The first stop was the Joint Security Area (JSA), which is an area jointly administered by the North and South. Prior to 1976 to be that soldiers of both sides could be on either side of the border within the JSA. Following the murder of two U.S. soldiers with axes in that year, both sides agreed not to cross the demarcation line.
The JSA is the closest that most people can get to North Korea. You can literally look across the border and see the North Korean soldiers watching you. You can also enter one of the blue buildings which straddle the border. When you stand in the north end of the building, you are officially in North Korean territory. Below is a picture of the border (left) and a picture of me in North Korea (right). The South Korean soldier is guarding the door, either to protect me from North Koreans or to prevent me from defecting to the utopia created by the recently passed Dear Leader.
A month or two in advance I had to contact the USO (who runs the tours) and to reserve the spots. We had to show up on the military base a few hours before I usually wake up on the weekends. We boarded a bus and headed to the DMZ. The first stop was the Joint Security Area (JSA), which is an area jointly administered by the North and South. Prior to 1976 to be that soldiers of both sides could be on either side of the border within the JSA. Following the murder of two U.S. soldiers with axes in that year, both sides agreed not to cross the demarcation line.
The JSA is the closest that most people can get to North Korea. You can literally look across the border and see the North Korean soldiers watching you. You can also enter one of the blue buildings which straddle the border. When you stand in the north end of the building, you are officially in North Korean territory. Below is a picture of the border (left) and a picture of me in North Korea (right). The South Korean soldier is guarding the door, either to protect me from North Koreans or to prevent me from defecting to the utopia created by the recently passed Dear Leader.
Immediately across the border is a modern-looking city with a massive flagpole flying the North Korean flag. At initial glance you might think that the city looks fairly nice. You might start to think that maybe life in North Korea isn't that bad, and perhaps life is not all that terrible for the 0 inhabitants of that ghost town. That's right, the North Koreans built an entire town on the border to encourage South Koreans to defect to the prosperous North.
At the gift shop they sold a few North Korean products. I purchased some blueberry whiskey, which was utterly disgusting to drink. After visiting the JSA, we toured a tunnel that the North Koreans were planning to burrow under the border with and stage an invasion. It is one of three tunnels that has been discovered so far, and it's reasonable to expect there are a few more out there. Pictures inside the tunnel were prohibited.
At the gift shop they sold a few North Korean products. I purchased some blueberry whiskey, which was utterly disgusting to drink. After visiting the JSA, we toured a tunnel that the North Koreans were planning to burrow under the border with and stage an invasion. It is one of three tunnels that has been discovered so far, and it's reasonable to expect there are a few more out there. Pictures inside the tunnel were prohibited.
Seoraksan National Park
After parting ways with my parents I still had one major thing to do on my Korea checklist: a trip to Seoraksan National Park. The park is located in northeast South Korea where the mountains meet the Pacific Ocean. The park features mountains, canyons, waterfalls, and jagged rock formations. We visited during a three day holiday weekend through a group called Adventure Korea. It was the same group that organized the rafting and bungee jumping trip that I went on in June. The group organizes tours for expats, allowing us to see the country conveniently and cheaply.
The first day we drove from Seoul to the park, hiked for 4-5 hours, then went to our hotel. The mountains that day weren't too high, but they were scraggly and clouds of fog floated right over them. The second day we rose bright and early for a 12 hour hike through the heart of the park. We climbed the highest peak, ate lunch there, then spent the afternoon descending and hiking through canyons back to the park entrance. We were there in early October, which is a little bit too early to see the autumn colors blanketing the landscape. That said, as we hiked up the mountains, they caught fire, and we got to see plenty of beautiful colors. The pictures can tell the story better than I can.
The first day we drove from Seoul to the park, hiked for 4-5 hours, then went to our hotel. The mountains that day weren't too high, but they were scraggly and clouds of fog floated right over them. The second day we rose bright and early for a 12 hour hike through the heart of the park. We climbed the highest peak, ate lunch there, then spent the afternoon descending and hiking through canyons back to the park entrance. We were there in early October, which is a little bit too early to see the autumn colors blanketing the landscape. That said, as we hiked up the mountains, they caught fire, and we got to see plenty of beautiful colors. The pictures can tell the story better than I can.
The final day we did one more brief 1-2 hour hike through a canyon to see a waterfall before returning home. I have some more great pictures, and you can check them out in my facebook album by clicking on this link.
So that basically sums up my autumn. On Friday I fly out to a small island in the Philippines called Coron for a well-deserved one week vacation. That will be the topic of my next post, but don't count on it being up too soon, as there will be plenty of college football games to watch on delay when I get home.
