The weekends are precious here in Korea. We work long and hard during the week, we use our weekends to let loose and have a bit of fun. This past weekend we celebrated one of our teachers birthdays. We went to a baseball game on Saturday night, followed by a night of dancing at a foreigner bar and capped it off with bungee jumping on Sunday afternoon.
Let's start with the game Saturday night. I was very excited to be seeing any kind of baseball seeing as though I'm missing not only REAL baseball back home but the opening of the Twins stadium. We got to the game about an hour and a half early to get our tickets. There was a huge crowd there seeing as though it was a big game between archrivals the LG Twins and the Doosan Bears. The reason they are such rivals is because they share their home stadium! It's a bit odd but it's Korea so I didn't really expect anything more. The LG Twins are not too great, think the real Twins of the mid-90's, but the Doosan Bears have a chance to win it all this year. Naturaly, I will be a Twins fan while I'm here.
While we were waiting for our whole entourage to show up, I thought I would enjoy some pregame snacks-Korean style. Much like games at home, there are venders out selling food and drinks. But quite unlike home, those snacks are not hotdogs, burgers, and BBQ sandwhiches. My choices were hard boiled eggs, some kind of nut (it was not peanuts), sushi rools, or griled squid. I decided to try the grilled squid. Although it was quite chewy and a little bland since it didn't have any sauce, it was really good! Never would I have thought I would be eating grilled squid at a baseball game.
Once we got our tickets we found some seats in the outfield. The stadium holds between 35,000-40,000 and it was pretty much full by the time the game started. Since we were in the outfield we had a great view of the "cheering sections" each team had. To our right was the LG fans and to our left was the Doosan fans. It was incredible how much they cheered througout the game. When LG was batting, the fans had a cheer for every batter. They didn't sit down while LG was batting. And it was the same for Doosan. I felt like I was at a college football game! I was tired just watching them cheer. It was a pretty good game. LG ended up loosing 3-2 but at least it was close. I was expecting a blow out. It will be an interesting year of baseball that's for sure!
After the game we went to a forgeiner bar to do a litte dancing. It is so strange to me to see a bunch of Americans hanging out at a bar in Korea, but it was fun to hear songs I knew and to have some fun like we do back home. It turned into a pretty late night but it was very fun and well worth being tired all week!
Sunday, after we had all recovered from the festivities Saturday night, we decided to go bungee jumping. There is a bungee jump park about 20 min from where we live so we all pilled into some cabs and made our way to jump. There were 7 of us and we decided Hayley should go first since it was her birthday. We got there, paid and had to wait a bit until it was our turn to go. We watched a few others jump and I started getting a little more nervous. The first four to jump were me, Diane, Hayley, and Jackie. We took the elevator up to the ledge and got instructed on how to jump correctly. Even though Hayley was supposed to go first, the man in charge pulled Diane out to the ledge to go first. She really didn't want to go first and got a little scared once she was standing on the ledge. She backed out, for the time being, and the man pulled Hayley out to the ledge to jump. Hayley also got a bit scared and backed out. Then he pulled me out to the ledge. So now I'm thinking, 'I really need to jump.' I was shaking, my heart was racing and I started sweating. But I knew I had to go so I just didn't look down, I let the man count for me and on the count of 5 I leaped off the ledge. It was such a rush!! I kind of wish it had been a longer free fall! I had so much fun and I would do it again in a heartbeat. It was a good end to a great weekend.
Work hard and play hard. Although this weekend will consist of Cherry Blossoms and sleeping in! I must be getting old!
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