Blue Wings and Things

I can't believe it's Wednesday afternoon already, and I'm only just getting round to writing about last weekend. It'll be this weekend before we know it.

Well last weekend, we went to the football. Soccer, in the Americanised world we live in here. Finally after promising to go with Ben time and time again, we did it. Samantha had never been to a football match before, and it had been about 15 years since I last went to one.

The Suwon World Cup Stadium (home of the Suwon Blue Wings), is a cracking piece of municipal architecture. Having been built for the 2002 World Cup, hosted here. The surrounding area of the city was tarted up too. So there are loads of nice modern sculptures, spotlessly clean toilets (one shaped like a football), etc...

We watched the match, for what it was worth. A 1-1 draw, with little in the way of excitement going on, on the pitch. In the terraces however, that was a different matter. Loads of chats, songs and tribal cheers. Fantastic! We didn't understand a word of it, but joined in none-the-less. A sea of blue, swaying from side-to-side. The comradery, of being part of a focused collective, I can see why people like the football experience. It's got bugger all to do with the game, it's all going on in the crowd.

We'd been out on Friday with Ben, Jorge (hope the spellings right this time?!), and Kirsten. Done the disco beer thing and hit a few places in Suwon central, where we bumped into a load of westerners. A few were okay and pretty cool, many were not worth mentioning, and the rest were arrogant arseholes. So enough said about that night!

Sunday, well that was a quite one. Jorge and Ben came round, we missed Kirsten through missed calls and crossed-lines. Anyway the guys came down. We put on some food, had a few drinks, and many many laughs.

Roll-on this weekend! (Oh and last night we went to see Ghost Rider the movie with Nicholas Cage. Not great, not great, I mean it, not great at all. A potential turkey, most definitely.)