Day 128: Soccer

After a nice long sleep, I showered up and took the train out to Ilsan. Today was Amy's birthday and she was having an informal 'birthday lunch' at a restaurant in LaFesta with the whole gang. I met everyone at Rosenbrau - a German/North American restaurant with the best buffet this side of the Pacific! They had an aweseome spread of yummy food for a really cheap price and so we ate as much as we could! Mmm....

Our plan was to hit the soccer game going on tonight over at World Cup Stadium in Seoul, but we still had some time to kill before heading that way. Most of the gang went home for a bit to change and relax, but four of us decided to hang out at LaFesta - myself, Amy, Steve, and Kelsey. We then decided (well, my suggestion) to go to a board game cafe and play some Clue! Everyone was keen on it so we went and had ourselves a round of some sweet Clue action and it was good times had by all! Man, that game is addictive! Steve won but we all agreed that a re-match was definitely needed soon! (It's great fun to be a Clue Geek!) ;-)

We all met up as a big group again and took the subway over to World Cup Stadium. WCS is a *MASSIVE* stadium - one of 16 or so that were built for the World Cup that Korea and Japan co-hosted back in 2002. It's a beautiful stadium whose roof in built in the shape of a traditional Korean kite, and I don't know the exact capacity, but believe me when I say that it would hold A LOT of people!!! It was probably the biggest stadium I've ever seen in my life! WOW!

The game itself wasn't all that exciting (final score, only 1-1) but it was still a fun evening anyways. For about 17$ CDN we were only 5 rows up from the field, and a professional soccer game (aka: 'The World's Sport') is always fun to watch. We all remarked on how well the players were all in shape, and how amazing it is when they kick the ball like half way across the field!! And then they have a ball coming at their HEADS at 113 km/hr (yes they had a 'speedometer' on the field for the ball) they actually run and try and COLLIDE with the damn thing. Now that's gotta hurt!!! So it was a tie game between Seoul and Daegu (another city in central Korea) but we were still marvelled with the stadium (although it does have a severe lack of concession stands) and the athleticism of the players.

I was supposed to meet up with Ailish, Barbara, Ellie, and Mark at the game but they arrived late and had to sit in a different section from us. After the game my Ilsan friends headed home and I met up with my Shihung gang. The five of us were *absolutely starving* so we headed back to our corner of the city to get something to eat. After finding no restaurants to eat at Sindorim Station, we were forced to go all the way back to Bucheon Station to find something open. We had some Korean for dinner and then decided to go for drinks. We went to some bar just around the corner and had a good time just relaxing and chatting. Everyone was pretty tired so we had an early night after that. A good day!