Circle me in Korea Bert!

Hello America,

This weekend was filled with more fun Korean things.  On Friday night we made an attempt to go out in downtown Suwon but after many failed attempts to find a good place to go we ended up loitering in the middle of the streets.  A taxi driver also threw a water bottle at me after dropping us off because he thought it was mine.  The joke was on him however because he didn't find any of the garbage I actually did leave in there.  It wasn't a total loss though because numerous drunk Koreans wanted to take pictures with our big group of white people and some old man even gave Lauren a small stuffed dog.  Talk about hospitality.  The following morning Lauren and I set off on an adventure to find Jamsil Stadium, home of the LG Twins to watch a Korean professional baseball game.  After an excellent job navigating through buses and subways we came to the stadium which is across the street from the Seoul Sports Complex which housed the 1988 olympic games and was very cool to see.  I'm sorry Minnesota, but the LG Twins fans are much more entertaining and the games are fantastic.  Despite the sorrow I felt after not seeing a single "Circle me Bert!" sign, I loved the constant chanting and cheering and it's even more fun to not know Korean because you just get to yell loud noises and try to follow along with the rest of the group.  Some of their songs had melodies similar to "No we ain't gunna take it", "Go tell it on the mountain", and a very familiar chant that yelled "OK!" at the end rather than let's go.  They settle for mediocrity here. I got many bewildered looks for wearing my Joe Mauer jersey or because I was one of few white people there or possibly even because I was accidently yelling strange sentences when I attempted to chant with them.  I guess I'll never know.  To keep with the American theme we went to TGI Fridays that night and it was not very good.  It definitely topped the charts of worst restaurant thus far.  Sunday was a much needed resting day after the full day of walking around Seoul the night before so we took it easy.  Nothing too exciting happened except for receiving two pine cones from a nice man who worked at some park with the second biggest (I don't know what) in (I couldn't understand where either).  Bear in mind I have yet to see anything even close to resembling a pine tree around here but evidently after learning we were from America (the land of pine cones maybe?) he finally realized why he felt compelled to carry around a bag of pine cones in his pocket all these years and gave them to Lauren and myself.  See, God has a plan for us all.  With that in mind, I really hope the good Lord will finally let me win the bear dressed in a frog suit in the crane game across the street.  I have been very successful in my attempts at anything else but despite my many efforts he keeps evading my claw.  Seriously, this is the movie Vegas Vacation, I'm Clark Griswold, Frog Bear is Marty the blackjack dealer, and I am going to leave this place with no change left and in tears if I don't win that cheeky little bastard.  I end this post with an updated list of things I've learned about Korea.

1.  Red stop lights are merely a suggestion and most drivers ignore them.

2.  Anything with pavement constitutes as a street because you're constantly dodging cars and mopeds regardless of your location.

3.  In summary of the last two points ... the drivers license test here is most likely an instructor watching you play Grand Theft Auto and if your felony level stays under three stars and you hit five or less civilians you pass ... top of your class.

4.  No matter how foreign and confused you look, natives will continue to talk to you purely in Korean very very fast and assume you understand.  Smiling and nodding has become my only response.

Good luck to anyone starting classes soon and I hope you had a great summer.  Keep in touch and I will see you where the red fern grows.