Lotte Giants Baseball Game

Today we went to watch a baseball game with our co-worker Iris and her boyfriend. Iris kindly bought the tickets for Ed's birthday. The game was The Lotte Giants vs. The Kia Tigers. The best thing about Korean baseball teams is that they are all backed by huge Korean corporations so they all have great names like 'The Samsung Lions' and 'The LG Twins'. We were supporting our Busan team the Lotte Giants. To get into the spirit of things, and look the part, before the game started we headed to the Lotte Giants merchandise store and Nina purchased a cap and Ed a baseball shirt. The game was really fun to watch, we had looked up the rules beforehand so understood pretty much what was going on! The crowd really got involved, with many mexican waves- and even a slo-mo one which looked awesome. The chants for the Lotte Giants were sung to the tune of classic western songs such as Donna Summer's Hot Stuff which we found quite amusing. At one point everyone blew up bin bags and put them on their heads, still not quite sure why but we joined in anyway. The game came down to the wire but thankfully Lotte Giants won! Hooray Go Lotte!

Ed's Birthday

Last week was Ed's birthday, somehow he managed to make it into a four day affair! On Thursday (his official birthday), Nina prepared the finest fry up Korean ingredients could offer. We had also saved a can of Heinz beans that Ed's Dad had given us for Christmas! It was a great success although the sausages turned out to be frankfurters. Ed was greeted at work with a big fresh cream birthday cake and then in the evening we went out to our favourite barbecue restaurant in Jinyeong. Nina told the restaurant owner that it was Ed's birthday and he presented us at the end of the meal with yet more frankfurters on the house!

The second day of Ed's birthday, we invited the foreign crew of Jinyeong and some other friends to come over to our apartment for some celebratory drinks. We had a really great time. The night finished in a Noraebang which is a Korean 'singing room' where we had our own room with a TV and microphones to sing the night away.

Despite going to bed at 5am, we managed to get up and out of the apartment by 11 30 on saturday morning (day 3 of Ed's birthday!) to head down to the coast. We took the bus to the city of Tongyeong, then jumped on a ferry to visit the island of Hansan-do. The island is entirely dedicated to the memory of a famous Korean admiral who defeated the Japanese in 1592. The island was very nice and peaceful and the perfect cure for our slightly sore heads! While looking around, we were approached by a Korean man who introduced himself as 'Pastor Lee'. Within about 5 minutes of talking to him about where we were from and what we were doing in Korea, he insisted on swapping phone numbers with the idea that we could go and visit him. We were a bit perplexed and became even more so when he said goodbye, turned around and literally ran away. We saw him another 3 times and in each situation he would stop, say hello, and then run away. We still don't know what he was running from.
For lunch on sunday we brought the celebrations to an end with a trip to Outback Steakhouse for a delicious steak. All in all it was a great and memorable birthday!