대한민국! Corea, FIGHTING!

I can’t go running this morning because it is raining and thundering. I’m rather put out. It’s only raining lightly, which wouldn’t’ stop me (even though my hair might sizzle off) but the thunder makes me nervous. I don’t want to get hit by lightning, because in Seoul there are no large buildings or trees taller than me. I feel badly, I should go running, but I have already decided not against it and now I don’t have time. Tomorrow, I’ll run 10K. I need to get a gym membership ASAP, but we have yet to find a gym that has a membership fee of less than 70,000 won a month. That’s steep.
The path on which I run is really nice and cushioned. I run on a walking path beside a cannel or floodway (there are many in Seoul to keep the city from flooding during the monsoon season) . The path has three levels. The very bottom is the newest path, there is lots of traffic on this path, with all the bikers and rad inline skaters. However, this path is not cushioned at all.
The top path is cushioned but it is full of people walking to work and school. The middle path is where I run. It is just me and the ajumma and ajoshi who know about this path. Sometimes it is like an impressionist nightmare; I feel like am constantly climbing stairs without actually going up.
The middle path is interrupted by the bridges so I either have to go up or down to run past the bridges and sometimes it’s hard to find the middle path again and I get stuck running on the lame concrete instead of my cushy path. (It is raining harder now, I would have been bald by this time.) There are six bridges in the three and half kilometers that I run, which means I’m having to fight stairs and inclines twelve times. It’s like a cross country run.
Because I can’t run and I’m already up, I decided to work on this blog post that I started ages ago.
2:45 on Wednesday morning, (June23) our alarm summoned us from the land of nod. We donned all the red items we could find and made our way to COEX, the biggest shopping centre in Korea. As we rounded the last hill before the mall, we began to hear the cheers and music and finally we could see the red crowd that had gathered to watch Korea take on Nigeria.
I was shocked at the amount of people who were willing to give up sleep to watch the game. I was shocked that I was willing to give up sleep to watch the game. Bryan really wanted to go and I was worried it would be my only chance to really experience World Cup fever. Luckly, Korea tied (which is OK in soccer) and will advance to the next round, only the second time they have done so, the first being when the World Cup was in Korea in 2002. I get at least one more chance to witness this. Korea! Fighting!
It was pretty typical of any big sporting event. Seven or so big screens, dried squid, and people sitting on picnic mats in the middle of the street (which had been shut down) and police babies to make sure nothing got out of hand. There were trashy girls being trashy in patriotic fashion and drunken boys being drunken.
It was a lot of fun and really tense at the end when Nigeria was desperate and hit the post a few times. It was odd how intensely excited folks got over a draw, understandable, but odd. The final cheer when the game was called was better than cheer I have heard for a win.
Mostly, it gives me serious cread to have not only watched the game but to have walked to go COEX to do it. It was 100% worth it, even though Bryan and I had to wake up early the next morning, after a one hour nap, to get to the immigration office to apply for our alien registration cards.
We managed to get out to Hongdae on Saturday (June 23) evening, under the pretext of seeing King Kahn and the BBQ show. However, we found out the King Kahn had a fight with the BBQ show and they cancelled at the last minute. I was fine with this after seeing them in Winnipeg last December, they were pretty boring. We managed to get free cover in to Gorilla Bar, where you can buy seven shots of tequila for ten thousand won. And although this could usually lead to a long and debaucherous post, I’m sorry admit I was too jet lagged to handle more than one drink before Bryan and I decided to call it a night.
We hurried to the subway station and missed the last train but just a few minutes. We had no idea how expensive it would be to take a taxi from Hongdae to home and we didn’t know exactly where home was so it only took a moments deliberation before we agreed to spend the night at a LOVE MOTEL!
I think we got a little ripped off at the love motel, she charged us quite a bit, but the motel was on a main drag. She laughed at us, too. As if our tired foreign faces where amusing to her. But it was worth the money, I would have paid double for luxury of privacy and air con and being able to walk around naked after my shower. We turned on the air con and fell into bed. We both slept until 9:00 at least. It was so luxurious.
I'm trying a new thing this year, where my posts aren't long and boring.

Dee in Korea 2.0

I think that the jet lag is waning; this morning I pooped as soon as I woke up. That is the first time this has happened since we arrived in Seoul.

Also, we got a cell phone, just a temporary pre-paid piece, but it will keep us more or less connected until we have our alien registration cards and can get good phones and contracts. And to those who are thinking of visiting us, we now have an extra cell phone to give to you when visit us. Perks, Perks!

I was prepared that this Korea adventure would be very different from the last. Last Korea adventure started smoothly: no late planes, no risky connections, all the bags arrived, there was a man holding a sign for me when I arrived.

This Korea adventure had a few more bumps. One very late plane: we waited over four hours in the Winnipeg airport on the boring side of US customs. Then we had to run through the Chicago airport to get our Korean Air flight to Seoul. After a fourteen flight, I was hauled into a little room at immigration because of the lost or stolen observation in my passport (Go die, Canada Post) and then one of our bags didn’t show up on the belt, just a board with Bryan’s name on it. As we exited the baggage area we found a sign with our name on it but no man. We waited awkwardly for a few minutes until a man came and quickly herded us and our arrived luggage towards the airport limousine (and by limousine, I mean a big grey-hound type bus) for which we had to buy the tickets. He told us to get off at the last stop.

A councilor from our school picked us up at the City Air Bus terminal and brought us to an apartment complex and told us that we would be staying with other teachers temporarily. We would be staying with different other teachers temporarily. We would not be staying together. I called bullshit and we are currently sharing one tiny room in a three-bedroom apartment. There is barely enough room for our luggage and Bryan has to sleep Korea style on the floor. (I have offered every night to sleep on the floor, but he insists that he is comfortable. He is so comfortable that I think maybe sleeping on the floor is better than sleeping on the bed and he is not doing me favour at all. Asshole)

In the next post I will talk about Korea Air and Love Motels and padded running paths.