Beth and I got to Seoul earlier that afternoon to meet some friends and sightsee, but it was raining a lot so we just went to a Western bar near City Hall and ate nachos and drank Filipino beer and waited for the rain to slack up.
It did after a while and we realized we were near Myeongdong, so Beth decided she wanted to check out Myeongdong Cathedral, something she's been dying to see since we got here. It's a beautiful church, but it was starting to rain again, so Beth went into the cathedral to take pictures, but when she did, she realized there was a wedding going on. She snapped some anyways and we left, agreeing that we'd like to come back on a nicer day, when we could look around a lot more.
We got a call from some friends saying they were in Itaewon eating Mexican food, so we met them and had more nachos and drank margaritas before heading to a Canadian tavern.
We made our way back to City Hall after a while and when we got there it was still raining and very crowded. A lot of people had umbrellas but common courtesy says you don't hold them up when a crowd is trying to watch a game on a giant TV. So people traded their umbrellas for red ponchos. There were guys coming through the crowd selling beer and people were already chanting and singing.
Throughout the game, we learned all kinds of new chants. "Dae Hamingook!" was the most-used one, which just means "Republic of Korea." There was also another chant that sounded like, "This is Korea!" When Korea scored a goal, fireworks went off and the crowd erupted with them.
It rained most of the game and we were soaked even with our ponchos. But we had a lot of fun and we made lots of new friends. When their team wins a big game (Korea beat Greece 2-0), Koreans don't riot and beat people up and break things like animals, they just want to hug everyone and share drinks with you and talk to you. People kept coming up to us and happily shaking our hands and hugging us and telling us we looked like various celebrities. The rest of the night we heard groups of people cheering and singing, all through the streets and in the subways and on the buses. No one got in a fight, no cars got turned over or lit on fire. It was just a merry celebration, and I'm glad we were a part of it.
Korea lost to Argentina 0 - 4, but they beat Nigeria so they advance to the next round. I hope we get to see a lot more games and celebrate at least a few more wins.
Pics coming soon, if you haven't already seen them on Facebook.
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