We seem to have skipped autumn here in Daegu and the leaves are frantically changing from green to brown to yellow and falling from the trees, all in one swift movement, in order to keep up.
Distant memories of being sat, sweating in the outfield under the lights, at the baseball stadium on summer evenings are, now, just that – distant memories. 7,000\ (about £4.70/$5.90) for four hours of uninterrupted entertainment, was probably one of the highlights of the first half of my time here. I had never watched a baseball game before moving here and, what’s more, I had absolutely no intention of watching one.
It may seem bizarre to have those feelings changed by seeing the sport played for the first time in Korea, considering the KBO probably is to baseball what the Conference North is to football (I can only make a footballing analogy here, sorry) but little else can get a crowd of Koreans as excited as an evening watching their baseball team – win or lose, the outcome doesn’t seem to really bother them. It is an altogether separate side of Korea, to be within a crowd of rowdy Koreans who want to drink, sing and have a laugh with us – in contrast to the experiences where you are constantly at risk from being glared at or sneezed on by an Ajumma.
Though Daegu is, really, quite a small city and easy to get around. Meetings with friends have now been reduced to Friday evenings and weekends and the lure of alcohol after a week of teaching the spawns of Satan means that "Friday evenings and weekends" really means "Friday nights and Saturday nights" -- we’re too incapacitated come the morning to even contemplate doing anything which requires leaving the house.
If you were to ask me for the greatest piece of architecture I have seen in Korea, for the greatest feat of nature, for the most perfect place to see the sun come up in the morning or to watch it go down at night, give me a day and I’ll give you an answer. If you were to ask me for locations of the best places to eat in Daegu, give me five minutes and I will come back to you with an answer. If you were to ask me about the best places to drink, I’ll give you an answer on the spot and show you my workings out.
After a summer holiday spent traveling through Bali and Indonesia, in shorts, t-shirts and sunglasses – waking up in the middle of the night to trek up a mountain for sunrise, following the bends of a river to find a secluded temple and sitting in view of a waterfall to stop and have lunch – and the long public holidays spent exploring the different districts, mountains and temples in Seoul and lounging on the beaches of Busan, thoughts turn to western holidays. Thoughts turn to Thanksgiving and Christmas and holding up indoors with friends, gorging on whatever food we can cook with just one stove-per-flat and curling up with anything warm we can find.
As at home, it has started to get darker earlier and, after 6 months of bathing in warm, sunny evenings, I am now doing little else other than taking the short journey to and from Muay Thai classes, or wandering along brightly lit main roads looking for food, my trench coat tucked in tight around my neck, dazzled by the neon signs above storefronts and high atop apartment buildings. Once the sun goes down on Korea, its cities glow in the dark.
Maybe it’s that I am being forced to look ahead to next year, which is making me look back. Maybe it’s because so much seems to have changed in the past year, or so, that I trying to look back and work out how to not make the same mistakes. Maybe it’s because I am sitting, looking out at the first rain we’ve had in weeks and, in this moment, I have no idea what to write.
