Take Me Out to the Ball Game...

I'm heading out soon to my very first Korean baseball game! The KIA Tigers of Gwangju will be facing the Hyehwa Eagles of Daejon this evening in Daejon. I've never been to this city of 1.5 million people, so I will face new territory twice today!

In fact, one of the most beautiful things about living in Korea is that rarely a day goes by that I don't cross new territory of some sort. It certainly keeps things interesting...

A few weeks ago a few friends and I went out for a drive with a Korean friend in his car, mainly in search of supposed dinosaur fossils and a lotus pond. Turns out we didn't find the fossils and the lotus flowers don't bloom until July or August, but we did get to eat chips and salsa (a rare treat over here) on some rocks by a river and enjoy the sunshine. We ended our afternoon outing at the Jinju Cultural and Arts Center to watch a friend's co-teacher perform some sort of ballet. That ballet ended up being a performance that was part of the Jinju Girl's High School reunion. So, we sat in the back of a massive auditorium, three obvious foreigners and a young Korean man, taking part in this high school reunion with hundreds of middle-aged Korean women with the same permed, short haircut. I couldn't help but clap along during the live music--performed by fellow alum, of course.

When we left (after watching the ballet performance to the Mama Mia song) there was a huge cloud of smoke along the river. But alas, this was not smoke but some sort of white spray that the city of Jinju distributes around town to essentially disinfect and help improve the health and well-being of Jinju citizens. WHAT?!?!

I also recently learned just how important the game of volleyball is to public school teachers in Korea. Unbeknownst to me, every year the teacher's volleyball teams from each local school gather together for a big volleyball tournament. They even cancel classes or shorten the day's schedule to fit in this major event. When the big day came, my co-teacher and I drove over to my friend Megan's school, a girl's middle school and host of our local tournament. There were at least six or eight teams there representing different middle schools, all with a fairly large fan club in tow. Most schools' teams had matching shirts, and one school's fan club (consisting of teachers and admin staff) even had matching bright pink t-shirts. The teachers watching made signs, had pom-poms, even a drum and megaphone. Our school had home-made pom-poms made out of newspaper. This was evidently a big deal.

So, myself, my co-workers, a few of my friends who had come with their respective schools, and everybody else crowded in this gym to see who the best of the middle school teacher's volleyball teams would be. There were rivals from previous years, and, naturally, that one team that everybody seems to hate because they always win.

As usual, Korea never ceases to surprise me. There's always something new waiting around the corner...