Teacher's Hike and Incheon United Soccer Game!!

Wednesday I only had four classes and they were all finished by 1:00 pm. I taught two grade 6 classes and two grade 3 classes. Nothing overly exciting happened at school except for the phone call I got from my sister, Lauren. It was great to hear her voice and finally get a chance to just talk to her myself. After we chatted I got to leave school at 2:00 p.m. to go on a teacher's hike to Cheongna Mountain, which is in Yeonsu not to far from my place. Not all of the teachers at school hiked, but quite a few did. Jiny, the king of the grade 6's and I hiked the mountain together and since, I finally have my camera back and working I can post pictures for you all to see. Left: Start of the mountain trek. Right: vendors on the mountain in case you get hungry or thirsty - quite hilarious, because so typical of Korea. The mountain was beautiful. It was completely surrounded by trees and it was very peaceful. There were so many older Korean people climbing the mountain, it was awesome to see them out and so active. I just had to take pictures of this guy doing push-ups on the mountain and the guy to his right was passed out on one of the pieces of work-out equipment. We climbed 317 stairs to get the top of one part of the mountain. The three of us were pretty exhausted when we got to the top. When we got to the top of the mountain it was infested with kids. They all started walking up to me and saying, "Hello, my name is..." "Where are you from?" I got asked by at least a dozen kids. They were so interested in me and then some started asking me if I knew their English teacher. I couldn't escape them. Here are a couple of pictures of the view from the top of the mountain.

After we finished hiking the mountain we headed to dinner with the teacher's. I thought it was just going to be a couple of teacher's who went on the hike, but it was every single teacher from Meonwoogeum, including the principal and vice-principal. It was a bit intense at first, but once everyone was there and eating and drinking it was a lot more relaxed. Seeing the principal and vice-principal drinking was funny. We ate shabu shabu, which as you all know is my favorite Korean dish, so that was awesome. Now, for the best part, I managed to sneak a picture of my teacher crush. It's not of the greatest quality because I had to do it discreetly, but none the less here it is. He is obviously, the young guy wearing the pink shirt in the back.

The bad news about my teacher crush is that I found out from Mrs. Kim that he has a girlfriend. I was crushed, but I wasn't expecting to date him and most people in Korea are either married or dating anyways. Turns out he is actually dating one of the grade 4 teachers at my school and she is in my teachers class. I was actually happy to find out it was her because she is beautiful and one of the nicest Korean people I have ever met.

I left the teacher dinner early because I was going to see a soccer game and wanted to make sure I got there on time. The Incheon home team is called the Ultras Hawk, yes the "s" is completely unnecessary, but it is Korea, just go with it. I decided to buy a scarf, so that I could represent the team somehow. The scarf was ridiculously overpriced, but it's awesome and I can use it for future home games. The soccer game was very boring, but I hate soccer as it is, so this was painful. We sat in the rowdy home team section and it was awesome. The atmosphere was so alive and crazy. They would chant and cheer the entire game, so it was really hard not to get involved. I managed to snag a video of the flag song, so if blogger let's me download it, I will. The Incheon team hardly gets any fans out to the games as you will see from the pictures posted below, but the fans that do show up make it a great time.

After the soccer game ended, I wish I could say in a win, but we lost, me and a couple guy friends headed to Yeonsu to go bowling. Wednesday is after all, bowling night. The game was only about 2 hours, which is standard for most sporting events, so we had plenty of time to make it to bowling. Picture on the left: Sophie and Alison at the bowling alley. Picture on the right: Tracy and I at the bowling alley.

I bowled the game of my life on Wednesday. My first game I bowled 153, which is really good for me and I had consumed some alcohol prior to that, so I think that was awesome. However, my second game I didn't even break 100, so I guess I got lucky the first game. After bowling finished we went to Far From Home for some drinks and laughs. It turned out we were out later than we thought, so I didn't get to bed until early Thursday morning. Since I didn't have school today I spent the entire day in bed and when I did get up I just turned on the TV and watched the first Harry Potter movie and part of Ice Age and then slept again. I did make it outside of my apartment today though to go have dinner with Alison just down the street from my house. Now, I'm just getting ready for bed. I just wanted to let you all know that pictures have been added to my Traditional Korean Folk Village blog, so be sure to check that out again.