Defeat

It's midnight, and Will's overdue. He was supposed to call nearly an hour ago, to make sure we were all up and going to Psycho. There's a good chance he's asleep, like Traci beside me. It is late by some people's standards. Traci's not going anywhere, and with the game already on, me comfortably in bed, I see no reason to move at this point.

We watched last nights game at Gumi Stadium (the people's exercise arena) in the hopes of seeing some mass elation firsthand. We saw something like that when we arrived, but the mood was entirely different when we left. It was a late game, real late. We arrived at the stadium around 330am, and it was already teeming with vendors and fans all decked out in red. Many had the red balloon rods to bang together and chant. Greg suggested we sit on the railing right in front of the screen in the stands. An excellent idea. We couldn't find the way up at first, but Greg managed to get pulled up into the stands by two dudes, one with a Korean flag on his back and the other with a Swiss flag. Greg then helped them pull me up. I could've easily imagined myself in some perilous circumstances in a warzone, sulphur hanging in the air, flashes from fireworks and explosions all around. Struggling to make it over the wall, where a fall could mean my ankle. Traci and Alice found their way up the steps as did the other folks. Rory insisted on a swig of 'the crayture' to give luck to Korea. An overzealous Korean man managed to give himself a hell of a buzz with no visible effect on Korea's playing. Unfortunately, he was dumped on me. He'd lean into me and wobble as I gripped the balcony wall and leaned forward hoping he wouldn't push me off. The drum section was right next to us, in the beginning really banging out the chants. As the game went on, though, they dwindled and soon it was a few of the originals and us foreigners whose respective countries had already been eliminated. After the second goal was scored, the leader of the band was standing there virtually alone, waving the Korean flag. France up by two flashed across the bottom of the screen and people started leaving the stadium. It was light out now, a beautiful morning. Traci and I stayed to the end. We had to walk home because of it, everybody pouring out of the stadium looking for cabs. It was peaceful walk through fields we didn't know existed, Traci drunkenly yelling "I'm in a corn field" as she stood among less then 10 stalks. I tried take a shortcut, leading her through a rice paddy and concertina wire on the backside of a bank, but she wasn't having it.

I went to bed, she didn't. She went straight to the Waegook soccer tournament over at the technical college, and continued the steady diet of diluted ethanol. It's really painful to be at these sporting events and not drink beer. Especially today, hot and sunny, with ten kegs available and little else to do. The soju just wasn't doing it for me, so I remained sober the entire day. The rest of the scene though was something else. The Gumi team was more sloshed than all the other teams put together, and lost the only game I saw--the other team was taking it far too seriously--but I think they managed to make the final.

Around 8 I got a call saying the dive trip to the South Sea was canceled, and now that I was freed from having to wake at 5am, most of my friends were thoroughly torn down from the day and the night before.