Wow! I have to say I've never seen a country that enjoys cheering on their soccer team more than S. Korea. Granted I haven't seen many, but that is besides the point~ During the month of June, Korea played against several different teams including Argentina, Nigeria and Uraguay. The country literally came to a standstill during these match-ups so that everyone had a chance to watch the game. We soon joined in the FIFA fever! I have never been more interested in soccer in my life. My good friend Jon Lennon, tried to give me all the ins and outs of the game, including his occasional sarcastic crack about how the U.S. is the only country in the world that takes time outs, whines about plays...etc etc. Despite his half-joking attitude about us, he did prove to be a good teacher to help me understand what was going on. He's a great sport and says things like "it'll be grand". He's Irish by the way, did I mention that? And he happens to completely remind me of my brother-in-law Josh.
Anyways, so back to the soccer frenzy. Kayleigh and I went out with the rest of Gongju for a drink at one of the local university bars and watched with intense concentration. Well, maybe that is a bit of an overstatement, but we did try. In between catching up on the usual daily chatter. :) Now the games ranged from 9pm, 11:30pm and 3:30am start times. Luckily most of them fell in the 9:00-11:30 start time. One happened to be at 3:30am while I was traveling with my students to Jeju Island and to my utter shock, every single student and teacher (minus me!) stayed awake all night to cheer on their Korean idols.
The last game in which we sadly lost, my friend decided we needed to do it up big, so we drove to Daejeon World Cup Stadium and crammed in with tons of other Red Deviled fans. It was actually one of the most exciting games I've ever been to and we were just watching on TV! I had a stomachache towards the end wondering if we'd ever score and finally when all hope seemed lost, we got a goal. If we had happened to win this game, we'd meet up with the U.S in the next round which put me in a dilemma. Who do I vote for? Fortunately I did not have to make such a difficult decision. Uraguay put us out of our misery by getting one more goal in the final minutes.
This was definitely the highlight of June along with my trip to Jeju which I'll write about shortly. Sorry, this summer is flying by and it's hard to keep up! 26 days until we actually fly home. I can hardly believe it! Hope you are staying cool this summer and enjoying some travel with friends or family.
