Hockey Night in Korea

Saturday night, I traveled with a few other teachers to Anyang, located in Southern Seoul, to watch my first live hockey game of the year. Who needs the Ottawa Senators when you've got the Anyang Halla?? The commute was a whopping two hours, but I have no complaints. The Anyang Halla were playing the China Sharks, a matchup of the Asia Ice Hockey League. The Stadium isn't very big - it could probably hold two or three thousand people - but the crowds seemed to get into the game quite a bit.

After two periods, Halla was down 2-Zip, but stormed back with three goals in the third, to win the game - which is more than I can say about our 'ol boys back in Ottawa (arrrgh). Tickets were pretty cheap, at 8$ a pop, and we had a central view of the whole thing. The rul.es seemed to be the same as any International game (no-touch icing, two line passes, larger ice) The only strange thing about the Arena was the lack of any concession stand - forcing us to bring our own beer and snack - (and forcing us to pay only 2$ for a tallboy as opposed to 10 - haha).

To celebrate Halla's good result, some of us went to a Chinese restaurant nearby. Although this is like going to celebrate a Senators win at a Toronto-restaurant, for whatever reason, the staff seemed pretty uncaring (I wonder why?). We ordered some Kung Pow chicken that completely kicked our asses. There were dark, roasted peppers that tasted pretty good for the first five seconds - only to induce a state of complete pain and panic moments later. It's the closest i've ever felt to an out-of-body experience. Oiii. And for whatever reason, I thought i'd have better luck eating them the second time, and that I was just kidding myself as to how bad they were.

Nope. Word of advice: Never order Kung Pow chicken in a genuinely Chinese restaurant. Ever.

Friday night, I had gone to a market in Bupyeong (a district of Incheon, about 45 mintues away) to finally go and buy myself a cellphone. It wasn't exactly a fun process, but I managed to find a decent one for around 30$ (a really good bargain). Since it was late, they weren't able to activate it, and assured me it would be done the next morning, and that they'd call the Korean teacher that had gone with me with the phone number. As it turns out, they couldn't activate it. It was a permanently locked phone, because it was stolen. Oiiii.

I returned today (Sunday), and they seemed pretty contrite - and instead of a 30$ phone, they gave me one worth about 70-80$. Score. They just need to activate it tomorrow morning (though i'm keeping my fingers crossed), and I should finally have a Cell. I'll let the bunch of you know the number, once I get it.

Cheers.