World Cup and Mokpo Madness
Where to start this episode? That is the problem. I am going to try and do it chronologically in the hope that I won't lose you on the way. It is now 4 o'clock on Monday afternoon- those of you in the UK will be enjoying the first of two days off for the Golden Jubilee celebrations- let me know what you get up to! However, things are quite different over here in Asia. Of course England has been very much on my mind since their match against Sweden only took place yesterday. Yes, Korea and its many English teachers are firmly in the grip of World Cup fever. And damn proud of it!
Thursday night was the usual bowling night. I had had a good day at school (the kids were very funny and we had a really good final lesson and even the one that usually only speaks to me in Korean had actually responded for the day) so I decided not to take a chance of ruining it by actually taking part in the bowling (two weeks ago I scored an underwhelmingly massive 25!!) so my role in the sport was purely ocular. But I was more than willing to head to the late night chicken shop for some beers later. We stayed until the owner woke up and threw us out around 3.30am. Then bed and school the next day where the kids remained in disturbingly good humour. I went straight from school to the pizza shop (sometimes a girl just has to have pizza) and from the pizza shop to the pub. No soju this night as we just sneakily bought soju from the late night shop (I lurve being able to buy alcohol 24 hours a day- heaven!) and sat outside the pub to drink it. After we had finished at the first pub it was onto the cocktail bar and many June Bugs (not sure what is in them but they are green!) and the food van with the best toasties in Mokpo. Finally made it home around 6. Another night of seeing the sun come up before my head went down on the pillow.
Saturday saw the resumption of Korean lessons. We have a new teacher now and the lessons are conducted at a friend's house in Hadang. The new teacher was very good and coped well with the usual combination of hangovers and bad Korean. Rebecca shone as the star pupil. She is a whizz with languages and, jealous though I am, this was to prove to be very handy later in the day. The weather is glorious here in Mokpo at the moment. The sun is out and we haven't yet entered the period of unbearable humidity that everyone has promised me. It was time to go out into the sun.
Mokpo this week has welcomed the tall ships from New Zealand, Holland, Russia, Japan and its very own Korean ones. They are docked at the Maritime Museum and were certainly worth checking out. They were beautiful- all tall masts and rigging. We walked down to where they were docked only to discover some kind of security stopping us getting within smelling distance of all those lovely sailors. The Russian ship was enormous and we were gazing at it admiringly when Rebecca remembered that she is fluent in Russian. She called out to a man on board for an invite. But no luck. Then we noticed a guy coming over to see us from the other side of the security rope. He introduced himself as Vladimir and invited us over- through Rebecca of course since he was speaking Russian. We went up to the security checkpoint where the Korean guards stopped us. Rebecca told them that we had been invited over by the sailors and through we went. Vladimir took us on board and showed us all over the ship- control room, big wooden steering wheel thing in true pirate style. We saw the TV room ( where a bunch of Russian sailors were watching 'Who wants to be a Millionaire' in Russian!), the table tennis room, the dining area and the cabins. Rebecca was chatting away very happily in Russian, only confusing Vladimir a few times by answering in Korean- the woes of the multi-lingual are many! Me and Nerissa followed behind giggling like a couple of school girls and occasionally asking 'what is he saying? What are you saying?'
The tour of the ship was very cool. But eventually we had to leave all those blue eyed, dark haired, female company deprived Russian boys behind. Shame. Little did we know that there was a festival going on outside Mokpo station and we arrived just in time to watch a Taekwondo display and scab a free 'Be the Reds' t-shirt (Korean football team t-shirt. Not sure what it means exactly- I think that it should say 'Go the Reds' but if 40 million Koreans say otherwise then who I am to argue?) It was a very cool display as they leapt all over the stage occasionally stopping to break things with their heads. Then onto a birthday party which lasted well into daylight hours and home.
And sleep. But not for long as we had to get out of bed and haul our lazy arses to Gwangju as we were all proud owners of tickets to the Spain Slovenia match. We bought these tickets ages ago and though I was a little excited I didn't really think that I would care. I don't usually get interested in sport at all. But the buzz in Gwangju was fantastic (once we got used to seeing so many other foreigners) and before I knew what was going on I was standing in the Adidas shop clutching my newly purchased England t-shirt. I think that I have told you before that I am the only English person that I see in Mokpo so I was very taken aback to meet so many in Gwangju. They were pretty easy to spot with their faces painted red and white (the blue in the Union Jack comes from the St Andrews Cross of bonny Scotland) and sporting rather fetching England shirts. We based ourselves in a bar only sometimes venturing out to try and lure boys back. I found that the Irish girls plus a handful of candy seemed to bring the most boys back to the bar and soon we had all nations there. The England game started but only 15 minutes in we had to leave to go to the stadium to watch a live match. I was sitting with Nerissa and Rebecca so we parted company with the others at the gate and wandered in saying repeatedly 'this is soooooo cool!!' In fact it was so exciting that I had to ring my little sister from the stadium to share it with her- unfortunately I picked the time that they were letting all the balloons off so all she really heard was delighted yells.
We were sitting near the Slovenian fans and I was proud that I wasn't wearing a Spain t-shirt- unlike my three friends (we had now been joined by Tom) who all made various excuses to changes shirts ('it is a bit cold here isn't it?' etc) within ten minutes. For the girls this was partly motivated by the cuteness of the Slovenian fans we kept bumping into though I am not sure what Tom was thinking (he claims that he was genuinely cold) though if he had known what was going to happen next then perhaps he wouldn't have bothered. And I don't mean Spain beating Slovenia 3-1.
Having got over the initial rush of it being the coolest thing ever to be doing the Mexican wave during a World Cup match, Nerissa and Tom got slightly distracted from the game by a wasp on the back of the man in front of them. They were peering at it when all of a sudden Tom leapt back yelling something about his head. He tipped his head on one side and starting hitting his right ear. The crowds were staring at him. Something had flown into his ear. We looked by could see nothing. But he said that he could hear its wings flapping. Nerissa calmly took charge and they disappeared off to the First Aid point together. A bit taken aback we still managed to stand up and boo the Spanish when they scored their first goal- spurred on by the Slovenian faces who had taken it upon themselves to direct the crowd with chants of 'SLO-VEN-NE-YA, SLO-VEN-NE-YA, SLO-VEN-NE-YA, etc'. We did start to worry when the others didn't come back for about quarter of an hour. Then Nerissa appeared and started grabbing her stuff saying that they were taking Tom to hospital in an ambulance to get the bug out of his ear and it was OK, she didn't mind going as she was going to other matches. Slightly bewildered we watched them go and promised to see them shortly.
By the end of the game they still hadn't come back. Then I got a phone call from Nerissa (god bless mobile phones) telling me that they were in the hospital, the bug was out of the ear and in a bottle and that Tom was Ok now. Great. One problem, the bill had come to W260,000 (about 140 quid) and they only had W60,000 between them and they weren't allowed to leave the hospital until the bill was paid. We were unable to help as we only had about W40,000 between us too. Eventually Nerissa managed to get hold of the others and Barry was duly dispatched to the hospital with his credit card in his hand!
So all that was left for me and Rebecca to do was get back to the pub to meet the others. Easy. Well, not so easy really. The free shuttle bus was a complete mystery, we saw buses pull up and then leave again empty, another bus turned up but no-one in the crowd of people eager to get away had any idea where it was going. We joined the queue for the taxi rank and waited and waited. Eventually we decided to walk. But we didn't know the way. We set off in the direction that we thought it should be but were stumped when we got to the first crossroad. So we asked a policeman. And he asked his mate. His mate enlisted the help of a few others and before we knew what was going on we had 7 policeman hailing us a cab! They proved to be more effective than we were and soon we were safely on our way to the pub. Where we met Tom and he showed us the moth that had been in his ear. They had had to call a specialist who had to get out a camera to see it before it could be removed. Tom said that it had been deafening when it was still alive and it had been very far into his ear. Nasty!
We celebrated the removal of the bug by drinking Korean beer with Slovenians in an Australian pub which is why I am sitting here wearing my new 'Slovenija- the green piece of Europe' t-shirt! We got the 5.30 am bus back to Mokpo this morning and I now declare the weekend officially over!
Can't wait for the next one!
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Thursday night was the usual bowling night. I had had a good day at school (the kids were very funny and we had a really good final lesson and even the one that usually only speaks to me in Korean had actually responded for the day) so I decided not to take a chance of ruining it by actually taking part in the bowling (two weeks ago I scored an underwhelmingly massive 25!!) so my role in the sport was purely ocular. But I was more than willing to head to the late night chicken shop for some beers later. We stayed until the owner woke up and threw us out around 3.30am. Then bed and school the next day where the kids remained in disturbingly good humour. I went straight from school to the pizza shop (sometimes a girl just has to have pizza) and from the pizza shop to the pub. No soju this night as we just sneakily bought soju from the late night shop (I lurve being able to buy alcohol 24 hours a day- heaven!) and sat outside the pub to drink it. After we had finished at the first pub it was onto the cocktail bar and many June Bugs (not sure what is in them but they are green!) and the food van with the best toasties in Mokpo. Finally made it home around 6. Another night of seeing the sun come up before my head went down on the pillow.
Saturday saw the resumption of Korean lessons. We have a new teacher now and the lessons are conducted at a friend's house in Hadang. The new teacher was very good and coped well with the usual combination of hangovers and bad Korean. Rebecca shone as the star pupil. She is a whizz with languages and, jealous though I am, this was to prove to be very handy later in the day. The weather is glorious here in Mokpo at the moment. The sun is out and we haven't yet entered the period of unbearable humidity that everyone has promised me. It was time to go out into the sun.
Mokpo this week has welcomed the tall ships from New Zealand, Holland, Russia, Japan and its very own Korean ones. They are docked at the Maritime Museum and were certainly worth checking out. They were beautiful- all tall masts and rigging. We walked down to where they were docked only to discover some kind of security stopping us getting within smelling distance of all those lovely sailors. The Russian ship was enormous and we were gazing at it admiringly when Rebecca remembered that she is fluent in Russian. She called out to a man on board for an invite. But no luck. Then we noticed a guy coming over to see us from the other side of the security rope. He introduced himself as Vladimir and invited us over- through Rebecca of course since he was speaking Russian. We went up to the security checkpoint where the Korean guards stopped us. Rebecca told them that we had been invited over by the sailors and through we went. Vladimir took us on board and showed us all over the ship- control room, big wooden steering wheel thing in true pirate style. We saw the TV room ( where a bunch of Russian sailors were watching 'Who wants to be a Millionaire' in Russian!), the table tennis room, the dining area and the cabins. Rebecca was chatting away very happily in Russian, only confusing Vladimir a few times by answering in Korean- the woes of the multi-lingual are many! Me and Nerissa followed behind giggling like a couple of school girls and occasionally asking 'what is he saying? What are you saying?'
The tour of the ship was very cool. But eventually we had to leave all those blue eyed, dark haired, female company deprived Russian boys behind. Shame. Little did we know that there was a festival going on outside Mokpo station and we arrived just in time to watch a Taekwondo display and scab a free 'Be the Reds' t-shirt (Korean football team t-shirt. Not sure what it means exactly- I think that it should say 'Go the Reds' but if 40 million Koreans say otherwise then who I am to argue?) It was a very cool display as they leapt all over the stage occasionally stopping to break things with their heads. Then onto a birthday party which lasted well into daylight hours and home.
And sleep. But not for long as we had to get out of bed and haul our lazy arses to Gwangju as we were all proud owners of tickets to the Spain Slovenia match. We bought these tickets ages ago and though I was a little excited I didn't really think that I would care. I don't usually get interested in sport at all. But the buzz in Gwangju was fantastic (once we got used to seeing so many other foreigners) and before I knew what was going on I was standing in the Adidas shop clutching my newly purchased England t-shirt. I think that I have told you before that I am the only English person that I see in Mokpo so I was very taken aback to meet so many in Gwangju. They were pretty easy to spot with their faces painted red and white (the blue in the Union Jack comes from the St Andrews Cross of bonny Scotland) and sporting rather fetching England shirts. We based ourselves in a bar only sometimes venturing out to try and lure boys back. I found that the Irish girls plus a handful of candy seemed to bring the most boys back to the bar and soon we had all nations there. The England game started but only 15 minutes in we had to leave to go to the stadium to watch a live match. I was sitting with Nerissa and Rebecca so we parted company with the others at the gate and wandered in saying repeatedly 'this is soooooo cool!!' In fact it was so exciting that I had to ring my little sister from the stadium to share it with her- unfortunately I picked the time that they were letting all the balloons off so all she really heard was delighted yells.
We were sitting near the Slovenian fans and I was proud that I wasn't wearing a Spain t-shirt- unlike my three friends (we had now been joined by Tom) who all made various excuses to changes shirts ('it is a bit cold here isn't it?' etc) within ten minutes. For the girls this was partly motivated by the cuteness of the Slovenian fans we kept bumping into though I am not sure what Tom was thinking (he claims that he was genuinely cold) though if he had known what was going to happen next then perhaps he wouldn't have bothered. And I don't mean Spain beating Slovenia 3-1.
Having got over the initial rush of it being the coolest thing ever to be doing the Mexican wave during a World Cup match, Nerissa and Tom got slightly distracted from the game by a wasp on the back of the man in front of them. They were peering at it when all of a sudden Tom leapt back yelling something about his head. He tipped his head on one side and starting hitting his right ear. The crowds were staring at him. Something had flown into his ear. We looked by could see nothing. But he said that he could hear its wings flapping. Nerissa calmly took charge and they disappeared off to the First Aid point together. A bit taken aback we still managed to stand up and boo the Spanish when they scored their first goal- spurred on by the Slovenian faces who had taken it upon themselves to direct the crowd with chants of 'SLO-VEN-NE-YA, SLO-VEN-NE-YA, SLO-VEN-NE-YA, etc'. We did start to worry when the others didn't come back for about quarter of an hour. Then Nerissa appeared and started grabbing her stuff saying that they were taking Tom to hospital in an ambulance to get the bug out of his ear and it was OK, she didn't mind going as she was going to other matches. Slightly bewildered we watched them go and promised to see them shortly.
By the end of the game they still hadn't come back. Then I got a phone call from Nerissa (god bless mobile phones) telling me that they were in the hospital, the bug was out of the ear and in a bottle and that Tom was Ok now. Great. One problem, the bill had come to W260,000 (about 140 quid) and they only had W60,000 between them and they weren't allowed to leave the hospital until the bill was paid. We were unable to help as we only had about W40,000 between us too. Eventually Nerissa managed to get hold of the others and Barry was duly dispatched to the hospital with his credit card in his hand!
So all that was left for me and Rebecca to do was get back to the pub to meet the others. Easy. Well, not so easy really. The free shuttle bus was a complete mystery, we saw buses pull up and then leave again empty, another bus turned up but no-one in the crowd of people eager to get away had any idea where it was going. We joined the queue for the taxi rank and waited and waited. Eventually we decided to walk. But we didn't know the way. We set off in the direction that we thought it should be but were stumped when we got to the first crossroad. So we asked a policeman. And he asked his mate. His mate enlisted the help of a few others and before we knew what was going on we had 7 policeman hailing us a cab! They proved to be more effective than we were and soon we were safely on our way to the pub. Where we met Tom and he showed us the moth that had been in his ear. They had had to call a specialist who had to get out a camera to see it before it could be removed. Tom said that it had been deafening when it was still alive and it had been very far into his ear. Nasty!
We celebrated the removal of the bug by drinking Korean beer with Slovenians in an Australian pub which is why I am sitting here wearing my new 'Slovenija- the green piece of Europe' t-shirt! We got the 5.30 am bus back to Mokpo this morning and I now declare the weekend officially over!
Can't wait for the next one!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
posted by Helen @ 5:06 PM
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