Hi, everyone! Gather round for the weekly Korea update. Here goes...

Well, as you know the World Cup is over. What am I going to do with myself now that there aren't soccer games on TV every night? I could probably stand to cut down on the drinking a bit. =)

Tuesday was the Korea-Germany game. Everyone was totally excited, of course, but I think in the back of Koreans' minds was the notion that it would take a pretty massive effort to beat Germany. People were generally gearing up for a loss and were content to have made it this far. All of the teachers went to a bar near the office to watch the game. We pretty much had the place to ourselves. At the front of the bar, near the TV, were the Korean-Americans and the girls who wanted to fawn over the players. At the back were me and the other white guys, most of whom wanted Germany to win or were indifferent. Remember last email in which my minute amount of American pride caused me to cheer against Korea? Most of the other guys were starting to feel the same way.

Anyway, Germany played really well, Korea looked overwhelmed, Germany scored, game was pretty much over. When it ended, the Koreans and the girls were sad and all left. Fortunately when we collected the money to pay the bill, there was about $50 too much so a few of us stayed and spent the money. No running through the streets, no celebrating. I guess in some places of Seoul there actually was some celebrating (I guess people will go crazy given any reason to) but our neighborhood was quiet.

Of course, the World Cup wasn't over for Korea because they were still in the 3rd-4th Place match. That was Saturday night. Right as I was leaving work, one of the Korean guys said that he had an extra ticket to go to the big baseball stadium and watch the soccer game on the gigantic outfield TV there. I figured "why not?" so I went with him. There were probably 25,000 people in the stadium, all wearing red and all Korean. Except for me, the white guy in the black shirt. So I stood out a bit, even more than usual.

It was definitely a party atmosphere with a pre-game concert and fireworks and such. Once the game started, everyone was singing and cheering... for about 15 seconds. Then, right after the kickoff, Turkey scored and everyone was stunned. The place was silent. It was unreal. Korea tied it up 8 minutes later and the stadium was rocking, but Turkey went ahead AGAIN just 4 minutes after that. Pretty crazy first 13 minutes. It was 3-1 at halftime and people could see that this was the end of the line. Korea scored a second right at the end so we had one more chance to cheer but then it was over. My friend was pretty upset and he decided to walk home alone rather than go back with me.

Last night was the Final. I didn't really have an opinion on who I wanted to win. I don't particularly care for either team. We were planning on watching the game at the same German bar where we had watched the USA lose to Germany, but the guys who were supposed to go stake the place out called to say that it was jampacked and not worth going to. So about four or five of us ended up watching the game in some trendy bar and then going out dancing afterwards. Sort of an anti-climax to the whole thing, though.

In other news... Saturday was the last day of classes for the first term. So I'm one-third of the way finished!! It was actually sort of a sad day. I think I probably had about 45 students between the three classes I taught, and of those I will really miss 10 or 12 of them. I gave out my phone number and some of the kids have been sending me text messages non-stop. It's kind of cute, actually. I think I was really lucky that I had good kids who ended up liking me and liking each other. I'll have to go through the whole process of "breaking in" new students when the second term starts on Tuesday, and hopefully I'll be lucky this time, too.

I think that's about it! I hope all is well wherever you are. See ya!!

Chris