Korea has a professional baseball league, and we have gone to see two games in Daegu. The Daegu team is the Samsung Lions. In the US, teams are typically branded based on their city, not their sponsors, but here, teams are identified almost exclusively by their sponsors: LG, Kia, Hyundai, Samsung, etc.. Even though Samsung is a huge company, their stadium is kind of dinky. We arrived very early for the first game and picked up fried chicken sold to us by screaming vendors in front of the stadium.

The Samsung team has 4 mascots and 4 cheerleaders, from what we saw. The mascots are hilarious lions; two that are apparently female and two that are male. They prance around the field, mostly punching and kicking each other, which Koreans think is hilarious.
Kids watching the mascots:
The mascots came out at one point with pictures of the cheerleaders attached to their faces, and proceeded to strip out of their lion costumes, to tanktops and bike shorts, and do a racy dance.
It was hilarious, and I caught it all on video, but I can't figure out how to post it here because it's a huge file.
The cheerleaders stand on a platform in the crowd, and they come out wearing different outfits throughout the game. Things get pretty exciting, especially during the last few innings.
This is a picture of the stadium (see how small it is!) towards the beginning of a game. Many people inflate thundersticks, which are essentially just tubes that you smack together. If you work on your technique, they make a loud cracking sound.
Baseball players stretching out:
I have lots of photos of baseball players stretching out. It's fun to see what the zoom on my camera can do!
Michael, Naomi, and I before the first game we saw:
And Miguel, Naomi and I before the second ...:
...and Antonio, Sergio, and Michael - we were sitting in the front for this game, right by the fence and just past third base:
... sitting this close to the field, we could see lots of the baseball players warming up before the game. One of the players:
....was obviously not Korean. The old zoom lens came in handy again!
Michael called him over and he kindly obliged. His name is Gary Glover and he's played for the major leagues in the US for about 8 years. More recently, he's played for Japanese and Korean teams. He plays for the SK Wyverns now, so he isn't a Samsung Lion, but this didn't stop dozens of kids from descending upon us when they saw that one of the baseball players had come over to sign autographs!

Korean baseball fans have a lot of fun at the games, and we were drawn to this guy, sitting behind us. He was chanting along with all the cheers, enthusiastically. Behold, a rare Korean beer belly:
The Samsung Lions didn't do well at either game I saw.
In the first game, the Kia Tigers scored 10 points in the first 3 innings! The Lions rallied, but couldn't save the game. The second game, the final score was 2-6. I may have to switch loyalty if it continues like this ... I'm a fair weather baseball fan!
What would a game be without some confusing English? This shirt was in front of us at the first game:
....huh??

pre baseball game wandering

Before going to the baseball game last Sunday, we wandered around Daegu for most of the day. Under much of the city there are underground markets. In one of them, there was a shop selling beautiful hanbok, traditional women's dresses.
We were also amused by this mannequin, sitting in a junkyard, fully dressed.
Here's a video of the street. The buzzing you hear is cicadas - the trees are thick with them and they often drown out the sound of the traffic.

Fun with masks

Everywhere I go, I see these 1000-Won (less than a dollar) masks. Seemed fun, so I bought a bunch to try with Naomi. They are hilarious.
The assortment:
I went with the pomegranate. It is supposed to control my aging.
It makes a happy face!
So elegant:
Naomi strikes a pose:
The stuff nightmares are made of:
Of course, we walked up and down our hall scaring/annoying people and giggling. After removing the mask, you are supposed to squeeze any leftover "essence" from the pack and apply it to your face and neck. The "essence" is essentially the slime the mask soaks in but we cheerfully obliged. Mostly, I felt sticky and goofy. So yeah, I'll do it again soon!

day off

This past week, I worked Monday thru Friday, but the week before, I had a Friday to myself. I took the shuttle to Chilguk, enjoyed a cup of coffee and wandered around for the morning.
I was alone on the bus (most everyone else was working at DGEV) so to pass the time I took some photos of the scenery outside. It was a beautiful day.
It is mostly farmland and most of the farming seems to occur under these long sheltered greenhouse things. There are a few on the DGEV land as well.
My delicious Americano, at a local chain called Sleepless in Seattle. It seems that Koreans love their espresso drinks, which is good news for me!
I did not eat here that day, but McDonalds is ubiquitous ....

high-tech toilet

We passed an LG store while walking around Chilguk and decided to check it out. Lots of fun gadgets, included some high-tech toilet seats that we got a kick out of. The buttons were so confusing! The toilets apparently come equipped with an extra nozzle, which can be aimed, and its pressure adjusted. At least I assume ... I mean, what else could all those buttons do? There was also a button to heat the seat.
I did not whip out my camera and take photos there in the LG store (I'm a classy broad) but then when I used the restroom at the barbecue restaurant, I was thrilled to learn that they had high tech toilets there! Photos had to be taken.
Toilet with the "control panel" at left:
Closeup of the most important buttons:
Maybe I'm just not adventurous enough - I did not try pressing any of the mysterious buttons. But I will ... oh, yes, I will.

mmmm, meat!

Naomi and I went to a restaurant that I believe could be called a Korean Barbecue (I'll have to check on that). We did not get Bulgogi, a popular spiced meat barbecue dish this time around, but I'm sure we'll go back soon so I can try that, too. This was actually the first time I've had Korean food that wasn't prepared in our cafeteria here. As I had been told many times, the "real thing" is SOOO much better than what we have in our cafeteria!
After we removed our shoes at the door, we were escorted to a private room with a low table and cushions to sit on. In the center of every low table was a hole covered by a metal disk. The owner/manager, who told me to call him An, speaks a little English, and recommended something from the menu that would be good for someone who had never tried that kind of food, so we got that. (Couldn't tell you what it was called; he pointed at some Korean words on the menu, we agreed to the Korean words, and that was it.) Then a different man came and removed the metal disk from the hole and inserted a pan of red-hot coals. He lowered a chimney from the ceiling to suck up the smoke. I was drinking a frothy glass of Hite beer.
Next, a waiter and waitress came to the table with a huge platter of dishes, which they spread out all over the table. There were 3 different types of lettuce-based salads, a small scoop of a potato salad, a few different types of kimchi and pickles, onions soaked in soy sauce with a dollop of wasabi, some random seaweed-type dishes, a bowl of red bean paste, a plate of octopus with cabbage and hot chili sauce, cloves of garlic, and a basket of green leaf lettuce and sesame leaves. It was a spread! A waitress also had a plate of thinly cut steaks, and she cooked them one-by-one on a grate over the coals. (I'm told that often restaurant guests do it themselves, but they probably thought we were too clueless and would set the place on fire! Anyway, it was sweet of them to do that for us, so we could focus on chowing down!) One way to eat the meat is to roll it with various toppings in a green lettuce leaf or a sesame leaf. Yummy!
In the photo below, there pieces of meat cooking (they start with a strip of meat like the one above, and as it cooks, they cut it into smaller pieces with scissors). At the left there are a few salads and watery kimchi of some sort, and on the right there is a sampling of more delicious food!
I love eating meals where you get to try dozens of different things, and this did not disappoint! Here's a shot of my own dish in the center. I had decorated my meat with some garlic the waitress had grilled and onions and wasabi. The garlic, onions, and wasabi were mild so they accented the flavor of the meat perfectly without overpowering it. You can also see the dish of octopus with chili to the left of my dish. I admit that I'm wary of big tentacles of octopus, but I tried one piece. It was so drenched in chili, there wasn't much else to taste.
After the meal, they took the coals away and covered the hole back up. We got some "popinsue" (sorry, I don't know how to spell it, but that's how it sounds!) for dessert.
It's a sort of strange dish - it's shaved ice with fruit cocktail, red beans, rice gluten nuggets (sort of taste like marshmellows) and a little yogurt. It's COLD and sweet and was pretty good!

Pet Store!

I have been teaching in the Pet Store "situational" since last Saturday. I had a day off on Sunday, and also get a day off tomorrow. The classes this week have been GREAT - only a few minor behavior problems, and really fun students. Their English level is low, but I'm getting better at running the class to scaffold their learning. It's going well!
One of the activities I do is a scavenger hunt, which allows the kids to pick up and play with the animals while also filling out a worksheet. Here's a photo of some of the more adorable kids, hard at work ...

Good clean fun on Saturday night!

After my nightmare last-class-of-the-day on Saturday, I relaxed in my room for a while, and then a group of friends and I caught the 6:10 shuttle into Daegu. We stopped first at some ATMs on the campus of Yeungjin College, which is the University that runs DGEV. It's a beautiful campus, but I didn't get any photos of it.
We walked to a bowling alley, here are shots of me, Naomi and Antonio on the street, and the street itself. I hadn't been in this area of Daegu before; it was pretty hoppin'.
We passed a medical clinic, and I was surprised to see patients walking around on the street in their hospital PJs (no open backs, thank goodness), including one who was dragging his IV around with him! My companions informed me that this was completely normal.
I liked my shoes at the bowling alley, they were pretty awesome. I probably should have put both on before I took this picture, but I got excited about the one shoe I had put on.
I bowled well, for me! My first game I scored 126 points! The bowling alley had 8 or 10 lanes, and the rest were occupied by Korean men who meant business. They probably weren't expecting our ragtag group to come in!
That's Lauren, Chris, Jazmin, Naomi, and Michael.
After bowling we went out and wandered around. Someone wanted Indian food, so we went to a touristy restaurant. The food was delicious, and I had my first Korean beer to wash down my very spicy Masala. Hite makes a lager and a stout - I didn't try the lager but the stout was not bad at all!
And here's a shot of the street at night.

First class ...

I found out on Friday afternoon that I would be teaching my first class on Saturday morning. Yep, plenty of time to get a lesson together! I was to teach four classes in the Pet Store situational room, and the students were all part of a one-day field trip to DGEV. I didn't know their ages, behavioral problems, or language level ... we sort of fly blindly into these things.
I prepared a lesson plan for the 70-minute class with about 2 hours worth of activities - always good to overplan these things! The students for the first period were 40 minutes late, which was nice ... a good short class. They were excited to play with the animals, and seemed to enjoy the scavenger hunt. After that, a DGEV staffer approached me and told me that my second class was canceled. Off the hook until after lunch!
The first class after lunch was still pretty good. 70 minutes is a long time (and usually, the classes are 90 minutes!!) but I filled it up. My last class of the day was the nightmare class. It was filled with LITTLE kids - Not the 9-11-year-olds from other classes, but probably closer to 5-6 years old. Twenty-one of them! There were a couple older students there, too, but they were sort of trouble makers. I ended up kicking one of them out of the class. Although I had overplanned my lesson, it was still contingent upon the kids at least being able to write English letters ... these kids couldn't! I had to wing it, and then I finally gave up and just let them play with the animals.
Here, some shots of the pet store. The walls make it sort of a strange room to be in, but it's nice and green. They tried to match some of the fake plants in the store with the plants in the photo on the wall, which is a cool effect, but after the last class, most of the fake plants were strewn across the floor.
Pet Store seems to be one of the more popular situationals - at least there are toys to play with! And it was one of the classes I had observed, so I had some idea of how it could be planned. It could have been worse. All in all it was an OK first day!

Nori Bong

This being Asia, Karaoke is a very popular thing. Instead of drinking until you have the courage to sing in front of a bar full of strangers, here you can rent private karaoke rooms (Nori Bong) for you and your friends. Of course here at DGEV, we have 3 Nori Bong for the students to use, but we teachers are also free to enjoy ... the first time I was invited to Nori Bong, on Tuesday or Wednesday, I was very apprehensive, but it ended up being fantastic! So we went back again on Friday, and I took a few photos.
Our favorite room has darker wallpaper with a bit of a swanky safari feel.
This is Antonio, who sings a lot of Coldplay and Sting. The picture is a little blurry, but you can see the TV and the awesome disco light above.
The TV just plays random Korean pop videos while you're singing your song, at least for the English songs. I don't know if it's more accurate when you sing Korean songs, in terms of matching the video to the song. But the Korean videos are entertaining. They typically involve tragic love-lost type of plots.
We spent about 30 minutes trying to figure out how to get the disco light to work ... finally, we gave up and started singing, which is when we realized that the light goes on when the music starts! I used the "slow synchro" setting on my camera to take these shots, which is why they're blurry but the lights came out really well. Here you can see Jim and Jennifer waiting their turn.
This is Michelle ... she gets really into singing the songs. I think here she was doing "Don't Turn Around" by Ace of Base.
I haven't gone to a real Nori Bong in Daegu yet, but it's only a matter of time!