BigOnKorea.com

April 30th was my 26th birthday… mid twenties right? Not late twenties. In Korea my age is 27. My age was actually 27 even before my birthday. In Korea you are born at age 1, then you go up a year after the Chinese New Year.

My birthday was celebrated quite thoroughly. Wednesday night we had football practice and we went out to dinner as a team. The coach called me over to his table and there we chatted and drank several shots of soju (customary thing, It would be rather awkward to say ‘no’ maybe even offensive). The coach talked to me about how he feels the team is important to me as an exchange student because I’m part of something in Korea, and I’ve made lots of friends on the team. He told me to mak sure I stay connected with the friends I’ve made on the team and also to stay connected with the team. He encouraged me to come back and visit the team in the future, even if the team is all new students he said I should come visit them as I am always part of the team.

After drinking several shots of soju a group of the team wanted to go to a bar and continue drinking. At this time it was about 11:30 and one of my friends told the guys it was my birthday in 30 minutes. When they heard this, suddenly partying was a must. We went to a bar and one of the teammates came back with an ice cream cake. I got to pick the beer that I wanted and we all ate cake and drank beer. Then they started making me do things, like drinking beers in one shot. Then my good pal Mike turned on me and did something horrible. He took a little pitcher and poured a whole beer in it, then he took a soju bottle and poured 3/4 of the bottle of soju in the pitcher. Then I had to drink it all in one shot. The whole team does the team call which is sort of a chant while I drink the entire thing. It was fun spending the evening with my Korean friends and teammates as they were happy to celebrate my birthday. I was very appreciative. My night soon ended shortly after that and I missed my classes the next day.

Since it was somewhat of a surprise birthday party I didn’t have my camera. Only my cell phone. You can see a couple guys in the photo. The main guy there in white is Yongsan. He’s pretty hilarious. Good guy.

Thursday evening the day of my birthday a group of friends and I all went out for mexican food. We then stopped by a bar to pick up another friend and when I walked in several people from the international dorm house were there and began singing happy birthday when I walked in. They had a cake there with candles. We had a little celebration there and then headed to the movie theater to go see Wolverine.

The following day (Friday) it was my friend David’s birthday. He wanted to do a double party so he sended out a Facebook invite to all of the international students. We were all at our common bar in the area. This time I didn’t drink at all. I was working on being healthy for the football game coming up on Sunday.

Sunday we had our first football game. We were playing Korea University. Korea University is the rival school of Yonsei University. This game was just an exhibition, it doesn’t count toward the national tournament we are playing in beginning the 17th. For this game we hadn’t done a whole lot of good position practice, mostly conditioning, so we relied heavily on our veteran players. I was placed as a starter on special teams on the kickoff team. We won the coin toss and kicked off first, so I played in the first play of the game. We later scored and had another kickoff where I went out again, this time I played the killer position on the right side. As killer your job is to tackle the guy with the ball (as if it isn’t anyone elses job). Unfortunately the kick went to the left and the returner took it up the left side.

Our next game I hope to play more. Right now I’m currently second string on free safety and corner back. So if our free safety or corner back player’s get tired or injured I go in for them. They wanted to put me second string on wide receiver for this game also, but I said I hadn’t practiced enough with the offensive team to know all the plays. We have two weeks to prepare for our next game. I hope to get time playing more corner back and wide receiver positions to be ready and hopefully get a starting position at one of those places.

Since the game was just a scrimmage/exhibition we didn’t use a real football field. We didn’t have goal posts, so there was no field goal game. The game ended in a tie 6 to 6. A tie since it wasn’t a real game, they didn’t want to do a sudden victory.

I will soon have more photos from the game, including team photos. But this is all I got so far.

That’s me #63. Jersey’s were given out at random. Numbers don’t matter to positions in Korea. It seems strange playing a defensive back with a number like that. But… doesn’t matter here.

#56 is Jeremy, #63 is me, #83 is Mike, #42 is Eddie

The Yonsei Eagles are in blue. Korea University is in Red.