Baseball, Noraebang, more Bau House and protests

So the mourning of the former president continues, although yesterday it was mixed with the 22nd anniversary of the June 10, 1987 victory over the military dictatorship and mad cow demonstrations carried over from last year. I noticed an unusual amount of riot police in town on my way to work. Then again, you could hardly miss them:


When we finished work, we could hear someone on a loudspeaker and, as we walked towards City Hall, we saw a line of police:


Looking back towards school, there were I don't how many riot police (again):


And this guy was right up against the line:


It's odd seeing the busy main road closed. That's City Hall on the left of the picture:


I managed another noraebang (that's only two so far and I've been here since March) a bit early in the morning after a fun night. Tracy sings her heart out:


I've been to a couple of baseball games recently. I've never watched or had any interest in baseball before, but it's loads of fun. The game's nice and slow, so you sit in the stadium and drink and chat while it goes on. Simon has decided that we're LG Twins fans and even bought me a cap to prove it. The first time I went, there were six of us and we managed to get one seat (which I ended up hogging a bit with Lovely New Korean Friend Jenny but no one wanted to swap with us so we took turns). This is the Twins' stadium, south of the river, which they share with the Doosan Bears.


I liked it when all the little men came out onto the field and started rolling around.


I also discovered that only the English appear to use the term 'Mexican Wave'. Our American friends at the game said they call it 'The Wave'. Interesting, no? Well, you get a lot of time to chat at baseball games. The Twins lost. There was an older Korean gent next to us, who poured beer on my shoes and then offered me dried squid and then gave all of us some and then accidentally spat loads of it onto my arm and T-shirt. Blerg. However, recounting this story to my mum led to this:

Me: I went to a baseball game yesterday!
Mum: basketball?
Me: No, baseball. It was great! And some Korean guy next to me offered me some dried squid.
Mum: What's that then? Marijuana?
Me: Er, no mum. It's dried squid.
Mum: Oh, I thought you meant drugs.

Simon has been to loads of games and managed to get a photo with one of the mascots:

which I think defeats the object slightly as they're the LG Twins. Or does that make him the other Twin? I've been once more since then, which was on the Saturday just gone. After a fun but rather heavy night out, we ended up at an all you can eat sushi place first....

(that was only my first plate, yum yum) ....and then at the Heroes' home stadium. It was Twins vs Heroes. We lost. I don't think we're very good.

The sun sets at the Heroes' stadium.

I went to Bau House again (and I'm, erm, going tonight as well) and, if you haven't seen this photo on facebook, it's worth putting it in here now:

Fun. A small dog in a Winnie the Pooh outfit tried to pull down my trousers. The same dog later managed to mimic Simon's facial expressions:

We've been going in an attempt to acclimatise Tracy's dog, Morgan:

(formerly, Morgan:)

to his own kind. He's good with people but bad with other dogs. He's so afraid that it's awful to watch him cower in the corner when we're there but he gets braver each time so I think it's working. We're off to the DMZ on Saturday, which I'm really looking forward to. It also means I can take a couple of steps into North Korea (safely). The DMZ and the bird tearoom were two things I really wanted to do so once the weekend's passed, everything else I do in Korea will be a bonus.