Baseball and swine flu

On Saturday, I went to Incheon to see my first ever baseball match. The SK Wyverns (the local team) who had won the national championship for the past two years took on the Doosan Bears. South Korea won the gold medal for baseball in last year's Olympics, so this is obviously a country which takes baseball pretty seriously. Lots of the fans brandished two clacky balloon things in their team's colours which they clacked in unison. The home fans were the loudest, but unfortunately they lost 2-1.

SK Wyverns pitcher

A Doosan Bears batter

A short demonstration of the clacky balloons!

The Munhak Stadium was easy to get to from Bucheon (take the subway two stops to Bupyeong and then transfer to the Incheon subway until you reach the Munhak Sports Complex station). Once inside, you don't even have to leave your seat as a man walks round dispensing beer (I suspect that if they introduced this to the Millennium stadium, they would need one beer seller per row) and another couple selling hotdogs. In the interests of any blog readers, I decided to sample a couple of different hotdogs (ok, so I was peckish). The cheese dog was strangely sweet tasting (who adds sugar to a savoury snack?!), but the plain hotdog tasted pretty good.

Munhak Baseball Stadium

Compared to sporting events in the UK, it was cheap to get in, an unreserved ticket was only 6,000 won (around £3.00). Although they should really have let us in for free as a whole row of foreigners provided plenty of visual entertainment between innings. Foreign teachers have hit the headlines over the past few days. A group of recently arrived teachers who attended orientation training together have been quarantined as one of their group was confirmed as having swine flu. This blog is an entertaining account of a rather unique situation written by one of the detainees. One of his posts made me laugh out loud where he records his attempt to contact the American embassy -

Me: “Hiya! I just thought the Embassy should be aware that 30+ U.S citizens have been quarantined right outside Seoul for suspicion of swine flu exposure.”
Operator: “Okay, well it’s a weekend, and we’re closed. Monday’s memorial day, so could you call back on tuesday?”
Me: “You…you’re serious?”
Operator: “Is it an emergency? Cause if it is we have someone we can call.”
Me: “Um…let’s see, there’s 30 americans in quarantine for swine flu exposure. Basically, we’re arrested. It’s totally cool, don’t worry—we’ll call on tuesday—”
Operator: “Okay, thanks for calling.”
Me: “No wait—”
*click*

Other Korean headlines include the news that North Korea "successfully" carried out a nuclear test and fired a number of short range missiles from its east coast this week and the suicide of former President Roh Moo-hyun following a bribery scandal.

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