SPRING!!!

Ahhh...I haven't written in forever.  My most sincere apologies!

Spring has finally reached Seoul.  The weather is warmer.  The birds are singing.  The sun is shining.  As the weather becomes ever more beautiful and I am able to spend more time outdoors in the midst of nature's beauty, I find Seoul growing on me more and more.  The frustrations of work and the inevitable "run-ins" with Koreans seem so much more bearable when I can get outside and walk around and explore.  It is a much welcomed change!

Spring's arrival also brought the start of the baseball season in Korea.  I think Opening Day here was the same day as in the States.  One of my co-workers had a friend coming into Seoul to visit for a couple days and had asked me, along with another co-worker, if we'd like to go to a baseball game with her on Saturday.  I didn't have plans, apart from the endless LSAT studying and research on law schools that has consumed my life, so I told her I would go.  I was rather excited, honestly.  The day was beautiful, and the company was good.  It looked like it would be a good day.

I have this terrible habit of unintentionally assuming various things in Korea will be the same as they are back home.  So when I thought baseball, I had this image of Major League Baseball in the States.  As I have found, it usually happens that my assumption based on the American image is so far from reality.  We went to the game, and the tickets were sold out.  So then we bought tickets from some guy at about 4x actual price.  We got into the stadium eventually after wandering around the entire stadium trying to get into like 4 different entrances (because our tickets were only in Korea) and found out that our section of bleachers was general admission.  We were about 30 minutes early and were pleased to see there were still some seats available though not many.  However, once we began asking if the seats that we saw were really available or not, we found out that they were ALL being held for friends/family that were on their way to the game.

As it got closer and closer to game time, we began to notice that there were just mobs, hundreds of people, standing along the back fence behind the bleachers without seats.  They way, way, way oversell tickets so hundreds of people that come to the games either stand the entire time or sit on the stairs or wherever they can find a spot.  It was absolute chaos.  When the game actually began, I was standing shoulder to shoulder with Koreans with 2 rows of people standing in front of me and another row of people standing behind me.  Before the first inning was even over, we decided to leave.  It was so stressful and crowded and frustrating.

Leaving was just another issue.  We couldn't even find the stairs for a couple minutes, because people were sitting on them like they were seats.  We crawled over all these angry Koreans so we could get out of the stadium, and then we just all stood there and laughed about it together.  It was so wild!  I'm pretty used to the crowds here but this was just overkill.  I couldn't believe it.  We ended up heading to grab some food and just hang out and talk.  It was still a fun adventure to look back on, even if it was extremely frustrating at the time.  I know next time to go about 2 hours early or so in order to get an actual seat....just another lesson learned in Korea.

Well my Sunday is coming to a close just as yours is beginning.  Have a great week!!!

It's ALL About Him,

KendallCooke