Apparently there are tall Korean men!

Sunday we were very luck to be invited to head out on a road trip (or should I say bus trip) to Changwon with our friends Dani and Malcolm to go see a Korean Basketball game.

Since we are without a television and will be sleeping during the vast majority of the March Madness basketball games back home, we were determined to set out on this adventure and see some Korean B-ball.

We took an early bus to Masan and then took a cab to Changwon for the event. We stopped first at a big mall called City 7 for some coffee and bookstore browsing

This mall was huge, and was the mall that we had set out looking for at one time but was not found… It was really neat, an indoor/outdoor mall… it consisted of three domes with a few covered walkways and TONS of stores… this was much more impressive than the Coex mall in Seoul. This one too had a Huge bookstore as well as some clothing outlets. ( we will be going back!) We stopped in the Dunkin Doughnuts and had some coffee and waited for Malcolm’s friends Megan and Nick to come by.
Once they arrived (and we had a chance to take pictures with the large number of white tigers all around the mall outside)

We walked over to the basketball Stadium, which was next to a soccer stadium/ baseball stadium and one other indoor field. We got our tickets early ( as well as a few extra for some other people who would soon be joining us.)

The stadium was incredible, and out front was a very large paved area where you could rent roller skates, bikes and scooters to ride around on. With all the kids having a great time it was a bit difficult to make it to the ticket widow but we eventually did. ( Also got a picture of a Huge Robot thing riding a unicycle… no idea why!)

Dani and Malcolm

After getting our FANTASTIC seats ( really close to the floor) we walked back towards the MacDonalds and Quiznos for lunch. The others met us there, and we all chilled for a bit and had lunch.

With not too much time before the game was to start we walked back over and took up our seats right next to the court… we could see everything, even the sweat on the players.

Each team is allowed to have two foreign players on the team… Wow who would have suspected each team would have two Huge black players in addition to all the Koreans.

The Two teams playing were the Changwon “Sakers” ( pronounced like Lakers but with an S) and the Ulsan Pheobus, wow. We were in Changwon so we pulled for the Sakers (home court too, we just followed the masses)

They gave you really cool fan like signs, that you could beat on your hand to keep the beat with all the cheers ( which they did the entire game).

The view from our awesome seats!

Tall Koreans warming up for the game!

Korean Men can Jump!

The Mascot, some eagle thing.... he was funny though, and had lots of break dancing moves!

They also had a bunch of cheerleaders and special announcements ( none of which we could understand, but apparently quite a few people donated quite a bit of money, so that is nice.)

Someone was having a birthday too, which is why the cheerleaders have hats on!

The Fan!

I was particularly entertained by the Cheerleader's HUGE socks... I mean some of these girls were tiny, but why huge socks? Are cankles coming back in style?

Me and the boy enjoying the game!

The Half time show was my favorite, they had a Tae Kwon Do school do the performance, and they were AWESOME… huge age range of students, but they were all perfect… It was really cool to watch them do back flips and stunts and staged fighting.

The movement was set to music and so much fun to watch.

The game was really exciting, as the points stayed very close until the very end. The other team from Ulsan ended up winning, which was sad since we had been pulling for the Sakers the whole time… Oh well, we still had a great time, and got a cool fan/sign souvenir.

They rush the court in Korea too!

Final Score... so tragic, it had been so close until the last four minutes!

After the game we still had a three hour ride home ahead of us, so we headed toward the Changwon bus station…

The trip would not be without a few hang-ups… we missed the next bus to Tong Yeong by 1 minute, it was literally pulling away as we walked into the station (bummer) so we bought tickets for the next bus (in one hour) and went to get dinner at the Bibimbap stand in the bus station… it was actually pretty good.

Malcolm saw the bus pull up, so we made one last trip to the bathroom, and that must have been the most popular destination, because by the time we all got out there the bus was filled, and people were going to have to stand for the two and a half hour ride if they wanted to get to Tong Yeong…. Which we did, but not that bad…( but there was not even enough standing room for all four of us even if we HAD to take that bus)

So since we had wasted an hour, because Korean sell more tickets than they have seats, they just sell random amounts of tickets and you have to wait, so things can get terribly backed up and you can still miss your bus even if you buy your ticket in advance. we were quite angry, we went to get a refund for our tickets, so we grabbed a cab back to Masan, and took a bus from there, which ended up leaving quite soon after we arrived, and even better it took us straight to the Gohyeon bus station instead of us having to transfer busses at Tong Yeong.

We were cramped in the back of the bus, but we finally made it home.

Despite the bus fiasco, we had a fantastic time, and are now looking forward to the baseball game this summer were invited to.

After All that we came back to school on Monday ready to teach, and I found out from one of my students that apparently Joseph, Dani and I were all on tv here in Geoje... My student asked me if I was the one taking pictures of the game, because she saw someone who looked like me during the game... Pretty cool! I guess we are famous now!