the masses were gathered and expectant as the match kicked off

a mere few hours after we had drunk the japanese bar out of house and home, we all stumbled home, put in a few hours of sleep, then a few less hours playing games, er, teaching english, before we headed for our futbol-viewing home: a bar called 'junji gaebyuk", the translation of which is, "may the albatross feeding on your wounded leg become drunker than you were when you wounded your leg in the first place."

or something of that nature...

anyway, in the 20 months that i've lived in gangneung, i don't think i've ever failed to watch a korean senior team futbol match at anywhere else other than this bar. it's not that this bar is so good, it's just that it's under the school where most of us who hang out to watch footy work and near where most of us live and, thus, so convenient. forget the fact, please, that i no longer either work at that school or live in the same area: it's less one of those traditional things to do than it is a superstitious thing to do. of course, we've been going there for so long that the owner knows us and we usually get little perks of additional finger food or a free bottle every once in a while, not that has any bearing on it all.

it is also the innocuous starting point of the night that saw my friend, big ryan, and i watch the sun rise (in a sense) two weeks prior, the details of which can be read by scrolling further on your gamma iode machine.

continuing, this particular match featured our korean boys in red v. uzbekistan in tashkent. for a clearer translation, uzbekistan once was part of the former soviet union and its capital city is called tashkent. the more cogent of our readers may associate uzbekistan with such unpleasantries as riots and uprisings happening in the past two weeks, but there is a great deal more to uzbekistan than this, i assure you. in fact, they are very closely related, in many ways, to the uyghurs of western china, about whom i've written in another, nearby, part of cyberspace.

however, this is neither the time or the place for a history or social studies lesson. this is about futbol.

if korea could win the match, tickets to germany could essentially start to be printed. lose, and panic sets in--and more drinking than usual amongst the masses. draw, and tickets could be printed, but only by those departing sobriety for a week-long bender in the name of futbol. in other words, korea needed a win, though a draw wouldn't kill. avoiding a loss at all costs was the goal...

the usual suspects gathered on this friday night, 10pm local time, and off for a ride we went...