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Published: October 3rd 2008
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Hello again!
We had today (Friday) and we have Monday off to make one amazing 4-day long weekend!!! It is wonderful to be celebrating Korean holidays, Canadian holidays and pro-D days. We have no big plans as school is getting a bit busier and it's nice to get ahead on the planning a bit. We are planning on heading out tomorrow though and possibly visiting a place called Yongsan - it's basically an electronic- lovers heaven with over 2000 stores within 10 city blocks of electronics... Those of you who know Mike are probably wondering why they heck I would ever let him even know about a place like that, let alone let him go there... all I can say is I have no control. And we may not have enough money to come home....
So we went to the hockey game last weekend - it was incredible! We got VIP treatment from a friend of a friend of ours - he's is a scout for the team. He met us outside, took us straight to the front of the line and into the building to the side doors. The front of the building and the lobby were really
nice so I had no idea what to expect for the rink. We were one of the first let inside and we got decent seats - although there's no real bad seats in the place - it was maybe the size of a community town rink. I think it sat around 800 people. But the Koreans packed that place out well over that amount. People were sitting in the aisles, on the stairs, and standing in the back. And there were no assigned seats, so anytime we got up during the intermission the Koreans tried to steal our seats. Luckily the guy we were with is married to a Korean and knows quite a bit Korean so he took care of it 😊 This was actually only a preseason game we think, but man was it over the top! The pregame show consisted of three Korean girls in little outfits on the ice playing lipsyncing and playing along to the Rocky Theme song. One was drumming along, one was playing an Oboe looking instrument and one was air playing the violin. It was hilarious. Then they had this sweet laser show and a fireworks smoke show. The game was between
the Anyang Halla team (Korea) and the Japan team. The Halla's mascot is a polar bear, so they had this blow up Polar bear head that was inflated for the players to skate through onto the ice. The funniest thing was after they all skated through, the lights came on, the polar bear was deflated and like 10 little Korean men in business suits came on the ice to gather the polar bear head. It was all pretty hilarious. The rest of the game was a little bit of home. It was similar to a WHL game, although probably not as fast paced and less hitting. But, each team is allowed to have 4 foreigners on the team and there were 2 Canadians, 1 American and 1 Czech guy. Some of the foreign guys played in the NHL or WHL. It was funny to compare to home - some stuff was similar, some definitely wasn't! The snacks were Gimbop, which is rice and veggies rolled in seaweed and donuts- not so bad, but kind of a wierd snack at the hockey game. The regular Canadian Hockey songs in English played all through the stops of the game. It was actually
a pretty good hockey game - Japan was up 3-0 in the first period and Korea won 5-4 with only about 5 seconds left in the game. At the end of the game, the teams faced the crowds and bowed. It was really cool. They had tonnes of prizes to give out, probably 10 or 15 and with only about 1000 people at the game that's pretty good odds - if only I could understand the numbers they read out...
I've been trying to find cleaning supplies so that we can clean our apartment, but wouldn't you know - it's tough to know what cleans what without being able to read the labels... I still can't figure out if we're using the right washing soap for our laundry machine - the bag is blue and has bubbles on it, which sort of makes me think Dishwasher, but then the back has little pictures which look like magnified fabrics and stains... or it could be food on plates... so I could maybe be washing my clothes in dishwashing detergent... oh dear. Oh well. All a part of living in a place with language barriers. Tonight we're doing pizza and a
people everywhere
Did I mention the fans were crazy? There was this lady behind Mike that kept screaming - not a regular scream, but a high pitched crazy scream, EVERY time the Halla's touched the puck. Wow, the Koreans got so excited when their team shot the puck anywhere NEAR the net. It was hilarious. movie - my favourite. We still have no phone and won't for probably another 2 weeks when we can finally get our immigration alien card.
Well, hope you're all doing well and that you're being blessed!
Love and miss you all,
Mike and Amy
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colleen
non-member comment
hi
hello, just wanted to say hey to my favorite teachers abroad. hope your having a happy day, i will eat twice my share of turkey this weekend for you 2! hug a korean for me!