마창대교

MaChang Bridge (마창대교), which connects Masan to Changwon, at dusk.

Bike Party and the Noraeboat!

Nubija bikes, the symbol of Changwon Bike Party

Woohoo, Changwon Bike Party! Last weekend was the May bike party. We rode from City 7 up to the train station, then down through Masan, ending at the harbor. But the party didn't stop there -- after dinner, we got onto a NoraeBoat! It's like a noraebang (Korean karaoke room), but on a boat. Our party boat went around the harbor as the sun set, and it was beautiful, crazy fun.

Changwon bikers safely riding through Masan's busiest neighborhood. It was a bit stressful sharing the road with huge buses and lots of cars, but we made it!

Bike selfie. I know this is dangerous. I'm sorry.

It might not be clear from the photos, but the theme was "Stoplight", which meant that everyone had to wear green, yellow, or red. I wore my favorite green bike shirt: Infinity MPG, a Threadless classic. I also donned the yellow shades I got at Color Me Rad and red shorts. Short pants: finally! Summer is practically here -- it's been almost uncomfortably warm this past week.

But thanks to the weather, many more people are showing up to Bike Party rides, and it makes me very happy to see attendance so strong. The organizer, Coby, is a good friend of mine, and I'm so proud on his behalf of how a small idea he had two years ago has grown into such an amazing community-building event. Here are some photos I took!

바이크파티 친구! (Bike Party friends!)

Down by Masan Harbor!

This lady is a kind of traditional Korean entertainer that reminds me of a court jester -- their outfits are bizarre, they dance and sing and act ridiculously, and then they try to sell you candy or something. This lady danced to retro Korean pop music and dragged a few of us into the performance with her; it was very amusing and very awkward.

On the noraeboat! I am not the biggest fan of Korean-style karaoke, but it's always fun to do it with a large group of friendly expats. Especially when you're on a boat! That just adds to the fun!

Masan harbor near sunset. It was gorgeous.

Bora and me, with the Machang Bridge in the background. I wasn't willing to try a Titanic-esque pose.

Coby and me on the noraeboat!

Noraeboat Party!!! Complete with wigs, hats, Hite, super-enthusiastic foreigners, and Koreans who look like they'd rather be anywhere else.

May Bike Party! (photo courtesy Bike Party)

Changwon Bike Party is probably my favorite thing about my city. It's always sure to be fun, it's a great way to meet new people, and it also gives me an excuse not to stay at home and watch TV all weekend!

Making the bike party a priority was one of the best decisions I made this past year, and it's sad to think that there will only be two more left for me. All the more reason to make the most of them, though!

And when I'm back in California, I'm going to get a bike and join the East Bay Bike Party. I'm already excited about it!

Stray Observations from My First Korean Baseball Game

NC Dinos Stadium in Masan.

I went to my first baseball game in Korea yesterday: the NC Dinos (of Changwon) versus the Lotte Giants (of Busan). I went with teachers from my school in an organized outing that replaced our weekly soccer game. Here are some things I learned or noticed about Korean baseball:

1. The nine major league baseball teams in Korea are all owned and sponsored by big companies like Lotte, LG, Samsung, and Hanhwa. The Dinos are sponsored by NC, a video game company. So, my city's team is not the Changwon Dinos, but the NC Dinos. I find that odd but not surprising.

Everyone who sat in the section directly behind these girls (and the dino mascots!)... probably didn't see much of the game.

2. Korean baseball fans are very much into their sport, and their cheering is as important as the game itself. Often, the cheerleaders (yes, there are cheerleaders, both to dance and actually to lead cheers) get the crowd so pumped up that they ignore what's actually happening on the field.

All of the songs and cheers for the NC Dinos batters. The song for #09 김종호 was set to The Pussycat Dolls' "Don't Cha".

3. Lotte Giants fans are particularly known for their devotion to their team and the unique style of their cheers and songs. It was difficult to counter that with the cheers for the NC Dinos, since nobody was really familiar with them yet. NC Dinos are playing in the major league for the first time this year. In fact, the game I attended was their second game in the big leagues, period. (Yesterday they played their first game of three against the Giants and lost.) So, the fans were given free posters (that could be fashioned into bullhorns) and fliers that taught everyone the cheers and songs made up for the batters and the team, and the cheerleaders spent every spare minute teaching the crowd the chants and slogans and proper hand motions. It was all highly amusing.

Two of my fellow teachers with chicken and beer. No popcorn, cotton candy, garlic fries, or cracker jack here.

4. Lots of Koreans go to baseball games for the fried chicken and beer. My fellow teachers and I arrived at the game an hour before it started simply so that we could picnic on tons of junk food. I filled myself up with fried chicken, sausages, sushi, dried squid, and Pringles. It was pricey, but it was delicious. All of this instead of exercising with the other teachers? Sure, why not?

#39, Charlie Shirek. I did a double-take when I first saw him, before I knew that Korean baseball teams could have foreigners.

5. There are a handful of Americans on many Korean major league baseball teams. NC Dinos actually has three Americans, and their starting pitcher is one of them. His name is Charlie (찰리), and he is from North Dakota. I cheered for him as loud as I could, and got all of my fellow teachers to say, "Come on, Char-lay!" Hehe.

안타! 안타! 안타!

6. Some baseball-related vocabulary:
야구 (yagu): baseball. 야 actually means "field", not base.
쌔리다 (ssaelida): to hit (a ball). This is Gyeongsang dialect; in standard Korean it is 때리다.
외야, 내야 (weiya, naeya): outfield, infield.
안타치다 (antachida): to make a base hit. Fans chant "안타! 안타! 안타!" when they're at bat.
삼진 (samjin): strikeout. Also chanted over and over again, at a team's pitcher.
죽인다 (jukinda): Awesome! Literally, this means something along the lines of "It killed me!", but in slang, it has a positive connotation. I think this was part of a celebratory cheer for a run scored.

Lastly, this article from Changwonderful does a great job selling the NC Dinos and explaining the ins and outs of Korean baseball.

You know, I got more into the game than I expected to. The ninth inning was especially intense: 2-2, bottom of the inning and the Dinos are at bat with one out and a runner on third. The batter hits a pop fly into left field, it gets caught, no big deal if the runner on third makes it home... and he does! And the crowd goes nuts! And then... and then the umpire calls it out! What the heck? I didn't even see the ball get thrown back to home plate, but the call is clear. And wow... crushing disappointment. I felt it right alongside everyone else in the stadium. I left the game shortly thereafter, but I heard on the radio and from my fellow teachers later that the Dinos went on to lose their momentum and were defeated 3-2 in the tenth inning.

Haha, so I really enjoyed the game, even though I thought I was going more out of curiosity and a sense of duty and 정-building with my school. I've been to just a handful of baseball games in the US, and I don't think that Korean games are really much different! They might even be more fun, what with the crazy cheers and all. I just might go to another game this season and support my new team... NC Dinos!

P.S. I'll be out of town this weekend. Fulbright has a weekend conference on the Korean island of Jeju (제주도)! It's been favorably compared to Hawaii. Although the forecast calls for rain on Saturday, I'm going to make the most of it and am looking forward to a great time. Cheers!

마창대교 - MaChang Bridge

I spent a very pleasant afternoon with my host parents today. This weekend is the last one I'll be able to spend with them this year, because next weekend I'm heading home! So, I think we all appreciated the time we had together.

First, we drove out to Masan (the ex-city that is now a district of Changwon) to go to a popular 짬뽕 restaurant. 짬뽕 (jjamppong) is often translated into English as champon, which looks French. I suppose it's an awkward loanword? According to Wikipedia -- which I fully trust to answer all my culinary inquiries, naturally -- champon is a Japanese dish based off of a Chinese dish. I mean, whatever; take one look at this and you can tell it's Asian. Order yourself a bowl of 짬뽕 and you get a spicy noodle soup with All Of The Sea Creatures, plus bean sprouts. I couldn't finish, not because it wasn't delicious, but because there was just way too much.

짬뽕/jjamppong. I spy octopus, mussels, and abalone, along with vegetables and spicy soup.

After we finished our meal, we drove out to Masan Bay (마산만), which has been nicknamed the "Dream Bay". Now, Masan has an economy that relies pretty heavily on industry. Like Changwon, there are lots of ports, shipyards, and factories. Many years ago, these took their toll on the environment, and the bay was extremely polluted. However, today you wouldn't even be able to imagine that. Masan Bay is surprisingly beautiful. It was very peaceful (평화러워요) and quiet (조용해요); I would even say serene. Cars rumble overhead on the MaChang Bridge (마창대교), which was completed in 2008 and connects Masan and Changwon (clever, eh?), but the sounds I focused on were the lapping of the water on the rocky, oyster-covered shores and the whizzing of fishermen's lines going out into the bay.

마창대교/MaChang Daegyo. It was cold and partly cloudy, but nonetheless beautiful.

My host father proudly said that MaChang Bridge and the bay were comparable to San Francisco's Golden Gate and its world-famous bridge. Sorry, host father, but I beg to differ (read: So Not True). After walking around and being sufficiently impressed by this feat of architecture, we popped into a cafe called Cordelia. It was almost impossibly cute: your typical Korean iteration of the cafe with plush seats, a hand-written menu, potted plants, random Christmas decorations, and $6 lattes. The wonderful thing about it, though, was that its enormous windows offered a perfect view of the bridge and the sun as it set behind Masan's mountains, bathing the sky in 노을.

MaChang Bridge and the Dream Bay.

As my host parents had their coffee and I sipped my hot chocolate, we chatted about many different things, including how my host mother thinks the bridge is pretty but the fact that it's lit up prettily at night is probably a waste of electricity (전력 낭비). Most importantly, I think there was a solid moment of connection when my host mother asked me what my motivations were for studying hard when I was in high school. (Currently, my host parents are having trouble with my puberty-stricken host brother, who isn't very focused in school.) This led to a relatively long conversation, due mostly to slow, belabored communication.

I told them that I studied hard mostly out of the spirit of competition (경쟁); "I wanna be/The very best," etc. I also wanted to get into a good college, as I set very high standards for myself, and lastly, I wanted to make my parents happy. I left out the part about my parents having pushed me really, really hard to succeed at everything, because I figured my host mother is already doing that with my host brother and doesn't need reinforcement.

I also tried to explain, in my broken Korean, that although I studied really hard, the competition was severe and I was sometimes too competitive to have close friends, or too focused on my studies to have a social life. I said that while competition is important (중요해요) for school, after graduation, it becomes much less so. Now... I have to admit that I don't really know how strictly I believe this. I'm competitive by nature, and I will always be. And in the workplace -- in the Korean workplace, especially -- having a competitive edge on top of intrinsic motivation and a good work ethic are absolutely necessary. But really, I was just trying to explore the possibility that studying hard and getting good grades isn't the Most Important Thing for a teenager. This is because I feel bad for my host brother, who just wants to play Minecraft and watch Running Man and build model airplanes. This isn't likely to get him anywhere in life, but for goodness' sake, he was in elementary school last year! I don't want to see his childhood get sucked into the black hole of hagwons and self-study so soon. Then again, he's not my son, and the burden of raising him in Korea's education-obsessed society isn't mine to bear.

All things considered, I don't think that I could have eloquently articulated my ideas even in English, but nevertheless, I am touched that my host mother even thought to ask me for my opinion. As my host brother navigates the rough waters of adolescence (사춘기), here's to hoping he ends up happy and not as awkward as I am! In the end, I really treasure today's small bit of bonding time. It's a rare occasion for my host parents and me to connect on a level that's anything more than superficial, and today was one of them.

Host parents with me in front of the MaChang Bridge as it begins to light up in the evening. Low-quality photos are the fault of the smartphone camera, but it's better than nothing, as I'm glad I now have something to remember the evening by.

Sunset

Masan, the Dream Bay

Changwon gets some pretty legit sunsets (일몰, ilmol). Every evening, I walk home from school and can't help but look up at the sky as the clouds turn from gold to pink to purple to gray. (But I also have to look down to make sure I don't step on dog 똥 or giant bugs.) There is a beautiful Korean word for the glow and colors of the setting sun: 노을. It is pronounced no-eul, kind of like Noel with the accent on the first syllable. One of my students happens to be named this, but to me, her personality is more like mid-afternoon than twilight (the latter of these essentially being, thanks to today's popular culture, no personality whatsoever).

Last week, I went fishing with my host father and brother. We went to Masan, which used to be the city just west of Changwon but is now the westernmost district of a bigger Changwon, ever since the incorporation two years ago. Masan's moniker is "Dream Bay", and this photo was taken from one of two iconic bridges that span said bay.