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.

Funeral

The funeral of former president Roh Moo Hyun was today and we'd been warned to turn up at school a little early, just in case. I normally aim for an hour before lessons start so I have time to plan, etc. but we arrived at 12. A full two and a half hours before the first lesson. Which gave us plenty of time to see what was going on.

We got off at the normal stop and things looked ok. Then we got closer to school (which was right in the middle of the procession route) and it started to look a little crowded.


Everyone was watching the big screens and when the current president came on, people started shouting. They were shouting 'son of a bitch' at him.




Then we dropped off our bags at school and headed back out. The road was already filling up and the procession wasn't due for another 45 minutes or so.


We wandered up and down for a bit and then around 1:10, the procession reached us. The yellow is in reference to his party.

They were trying to move the crowd back to let it through:




Then, it arrived. The music made it really surreal and people were throwing yellow paper planes at the hearse. Note the amount of mobile phone photo takers too.



When we left school, the were 22.000 riot police and some massive water cannons. But, thankfully, no trouble. Hopefully, things will stay peaceful tonight.


Then they all stood up and we decided it was time to go.



Facing them, the crowds of people were sitting or standing quietly with candles.


Down by Deoksugung it was still crowded.

It was quite a surreal experience, being part of the crowd, with people crying and others shouting, with a moving soundtrack over everything. I'm glad I work in the heart of the city, where I'm able to see things like this. It was a very strange day though and, in true Korean style, it ended with norae-bang at 5 am.

Mourning former President Roh Moo-Hyun

I work very close to City Hall. LTRC is just around the corner from it and so whenever there is a protest or large event, we get stuck in the middle. You may have heard that the former President, Roh Moo-Hyun, committed suicide over the weekend. On Monday, these were the scenes as we left school for home.

You can see the queue of people waiting for their turn to write something or give a white flower but the people in the foreground are all police (just in case!). This is at the end of the road the school is on.

A lot of these pictures are dark and/or blurry. Sorry about that. It was around 8pm and there were a lot of people pushing me.

The queue went all the way up the road to the British Embassy and back down again.


And off in every direction, as far as I could tell.

There is currently a long string that runs the length of the road and people have tied ribbons to it. We had to go down into the subway and up again to get past people.

There are all kinds of tributes and pictures stuck on the subway walls.

People were writing on a huge piece of paper on the ground as well.

We then had to make our way through the crowds of people outside Deoksugung, a palace more or less opposite City Hall.

A flower seller.

Once we'd passed the long queue and the large crowd, we found people lining the shops along the road, all reading the newspaper that had just come out.

Further on, there was another little gathering.

The view behind as we left the area.

Just across the road from that last gathering, there were tons of police. I took about five better, closer photos of them but they were all dark and eventually the police told me to stop, so we left.

I have to say that this sort of thing just wouldn't happen in England. I don't want to say 'hysteria' but, I mean, the guy was impeached for corruption and people didn't like him. As Amy pointed out, this sort of thing glorifies suicide and as it's the fourth largest cause of death in South Korea, it doesn't need this sort of press. Interesting though.