Seoul Searching: World Cup

The best way to describe the World Cup atmosphere in Korea is to imagine that the entire United States population was Philly fans all rooting for the World Series game. Now mind you, I haven't seen any burning couches in the street yet, but the pride in the team is comparable. It has been a great experience watching the World Cup games here, and I think it's an experience a lot of people don't get to have. Every store you go into is selling Korean paraphernalia and every thing you buy is a special World Cup edition. For the first World Cup game, I watched the game at my friend Kate's new apartment with a couple of her students. I missed half of the game because my host family and I had gone to see Mama Mia (which was entirely in Korea...ABBA songs included...but that's another story). For the second game, I dressed up in my Red Devils gear and met my Fulbright friends for grilled meat and beer and then headed to the local university stadium where they were playing the game on a big screen. Watching the game there was amazing. There had to have been at least a thousand people there, all wearing red shirts and red devil horns and shouting "De-Han-Min-Guk" (Korea in Korean) over and over again. Unfortunately we lost the game, but it was still a great time. The third game is tonight at 3:30am and from what I've heard pretty much everyone who is a Red Devils fan (my host family included) will be up at 3:30am watching the game. I still haven't decided whether or not I can do that and still function at school tomorrow.
Here are some pictures from the first two games:

Tammy decked out in her Red Devil gear. In case you were wondering, Korea used to be spelled Corea until the Japanese ruled the country and changed it to a "K" because K comes after J in the alphabet...or so my host mom told me.