Being a beautiful weekend here in Seoul, Ashley, Dani and I wanted to take advantage of it and spend a lot of time outdoors. On Saturday morning we all met at our favorite lunch spot (On the Border) and planned a stellar weekend! After lunch we headed over to Olympic Park and took advantage of the bike rentals.
We decided to get a bike for 4 people and we peddled that thing around Olympic Park two times! I have been to Olympic Park before, but I have never explored it in it's entirety. I was able to see all of the gymnasiums and the swimming pool complex as well as
the various statues contained within the park. Saturday is a busy day at the park and people of all ages are riding bikes, running, rollerblading and lazying about in the grass. After bike riding we laid in the talking and reading and taking in the sights of the park. Children were having exercise classes and
rollerbladers were falling while a group practiced their dancing moves. As the sun began to set we headed out towards Ashley's neck of the woods in
Godeok. We had a delicious Pizza Hut dinner and headed to
noraebang (or singing room). Generally we seek out a
noraebang after a night out and have had a few drinks, but Dani and I convinced Ashley (who isn't a huge fan of singing in front of people) that
noraebang can be just as fun sober as it can after a few drinks. We had a blast singing songs together and solo and the man running the
noraebang even gave us a free 30 minutes! It was quite late after we finished and we all headed our
separate directions.
Sunday we decided to check out a baseball game at the
Jamsil Sports Complex (where Olympic Stadium is located). I really wanted to go to an LG Twins game because I'm a Minnesota Twins fan and I thought it would be fun to cheer on the Twins in Korea too. Luckily, the Twins had a 3 game series with the KIA Tigers this weekend and we were able to catch a game. We bought tickets for a mere 6,000W and ended up having pretty good seats in the outfield, between 1st and 2
nd base. Baseball games in Korea are a bit different from games at home, but the affection for baseball and the teams is very much the same. One thing that struck me as odd, right away, was the lack of a seat number on our tickets. We bought the Yellow-Green tickets which meant we could sit anywhere within the Yellow OR Green sections. We chose Green because we were able to get 3 seats together and it was nice to sit in the outfield. Another difference is the fact
that you can bring in anything you want to the ballpark. People had
KFC, Burger King, whole
Dominos pizzas and beer and snacks purchased outside the venue. Next time I go I'm bringing a picnic lunch/dinner like most of the Koreans did. Korean baseball is very noisy and the fans cheer on their teams with chants and banging on
inter tubes. Each team has different chants and seemingly, each player has some sort of chant. We didn't stay for the whole game as Dani and Ashley aren't huge baseball fans and we were getting hungry. Next time I go I'll stay the whole time as I really do miss going to baseball games. When we left the LG Twins were trailing the KIA Tigers 3 to 1 and I'm not sure who ended up winning. Overall, it was a great weekend and I crossed two things off my to do list! Tomorrow is June, can you believe it? I've been here almost 11 months!
use while it is similar to home, it is also very different. My favorite part is the cheering. Each team has their own cheers and each player also has some form of a cheer. It's really fun and I found myself rooting for the Giants tonight. We also witnessed a proposal, she said "yes" and a portion of the 6th inning stretch (yes, I wrote that correctly) was dedicated to panning to couples in the audience and telling them to kiss on the big screen. After successful runs of male/female couples, the videographer decided to see if two males would kiss. Korea is a rather homophobic society so this was something quite extraordinary. Not only did these males kiss, they kissed twice! I'm sure they were just friends, but it sure stirred up the audience...with cheers nonetheless. Hooray for Koreans at baseball games!
