Take Me Out To The Ball Game and Bupyeong!!

Friday's at school are always one of my bigger days. I usually have at least five classes plus my teacher's class. Even though I had five classes to teach the day seemed to go by rather fast. It may just be me, but I've been doing a lot better here in Korea and I've really started enjoying teaching because I'm starting to get the full 40 minutes of teaching time, which makes the time go by way faster. I don't know if you remember way back when on my blogs when I was writing about how much I hated teaching the grade 4's because of the English co-teacher, well ever since she gave me full control of the grade 4 classes she's really grown on me and become less annoying. I never hated teaching the grade 5's, but they aren't as fun as the grade 3 or 6's. However, I really like the old English co-teacher who is back from maternity leave. She is really good at her job and the English classes have become more enjoyable. Once I was done teaching my regular classes, which didn't end until 2:40 p.m. I had 20 minutes before my teacher's class. Well, at 3:00 p.m. Jiny informs me that the teacher's class has been postponed for yet another time to this coming Tuesday. That was just fine by me. I needed a break from teaching for the day.

After school I headed home and got showered and changed to meet up with Nicole to head to my very first Incheon Wyverns baseball game. Nicole managed to get 20 'FREE' tickets to their games this pst weekend and she gave me one of them. I was super excited because we all know baseball is my favorite sport, so being able to actually go to a live game after so long I was ecstatic. We were late getting to the game, which seems to happen when Nicole and I travel together. However, we weren't too concerned about it because the tickets were free and basbeall games go rather long. We just felt bad for the friends that were waiting for us. Left: A picture of the baseball stadium. Right: This banner cracked me up, so I had to take a picture. Fan First! Happy Baseball! Oh Korea, how you make me laugh. Even though we were late we only missed a bit of the firt inning. The stadium was really nice and although there weren't a ton of fans, there were wnough for it to be a great baseball game. They had everything you would find at a Western ball park. They had a guy selling beers, mascots, cheers, snack shops, souvenir shops, a smoking section and they even had cheerleaders and this being Korea and all, why wouldn't they?!?! Left: One of the mascots who was a dancing machine. Right: Nicole and I excited to be at the baseball game.

There was actually a lot of pretty cool stuff that went on at the baseball game. The cheerleaders were very entertaining and they always threw free stuff into the crowd. There was a guy that conducted the fans in cheering/chanting. He wore a Wyverns baseball uniform, white gloves and had a whistle. He was pretty intense, but entertaining nonetheless. It was a lot of fun being there with a bunch of friends as well. In fact, it was Nick's first baseball game ever. He's not a big fan, but I assured him it was still exciting to watch and way better live than on TV as most sports are. A couple of others were baseball game virgins as well, so it was a big Friday night at the ball park. Not only was exciting stuff happening during the game, but there were so damn adorable kids at the game as well. I took a picture of these adorable kids sitting in the rows in front of us. Beware of Cuteness!Ok, so I couldn't resist putting up these pictures I took of some signs that were at the game. Left: The sign for the women's washroom. Below: The sign for the men's washroom. Right: Just a random hilarious sign inside the satdium.

So, the Incheon Wyverns won the game 9-7 and they are one of the best teams in the league, so that was exciting. After the baseball game I was undecided about whether or not I wanted to go home or stay out. The baseball game ended up lasting longer than expected. In fact, the game lasted 3 hours. Fine by me since I love baseball, but not so fun if you don't. I ended up decided to hang out with Nicole in Bupyeong where we would meet up with some other friends, Lindsay and May. It was May's birthday and Friday was first time meeting her. She is a beautiful Phillipino girl who is married to a Korean man. Anyways, Lindsay and May were just finishing dinner, so we decided to head to Dizzy's for some drinks afterwards since it was right across the street. This is where our friend Lisa ended up joining us. I enjoyed a delicious cocktail called, Angels Tears. Plus, we got to enjoy a bar show. The bartenders did tricks with drinks and fire, etc. We ended up staying at Dizzy's longer than expected, so when we finally decided to leave we wandered the streets of Bupyeong for a bit before we decided to live life dangerously and go to a nightclub. What's so dangerous about that you say?? Well, unlike Western style nightclubs in Korea they have a thing called bookings. This is where the people that work at the nightclub drag random girls into private rooms or to tables full of guys and the guys buy the girls drinks. We paid 50,000 ($50) for all five us to get into the club. This cost includes our own table, a beer each and a fruit platter. It's really not that bad of a deal for the money. The DJ was actually really good, which meant the music was good too. Lisa, who is Korean and May both got booked, but they didn't want to be, so they pretended they didn't speak Korean and wouldn't go without Nicole, Lindsay and I. he workers pretty much drag the girls to the bookings with such force it's hard for the girls to fight them off.

Once we were done with the nightclub we wandered the streets and Nicole played a soccer machine on the street, which attracted a crowd of Koreans who were very impressed with her strength and soccer ball kicking ability. In fact, a group of guys came over to us and wanted to get their pictures taken. They were nervous about it, but it was fun and were nice about it. You get use to be stared at and asked to be in pictures after a while. It's like being a celebrity, but without the money and the perks...hahaha! By the time we were done with all the pictures being taken of us we decided what to do next. Lindsay, May and I headed home to Yeonsu together in a cab and Lisa and Nicole stayed out in Bupyeong. By the time I got home it was after 4:00 a.m. Needless to say I had a pretty crazy week and Friday was icing on the cake.