The Winter Olympics just ended, and I got a chance to watch a bit of it. Watching the Olympics in Korea is a whole different ballgame than in America, you know, assuming they played ball-sports in the winter. To begin with, I am pretty sure that every single Korean athlete got a television appearance. One day I was lucky enough to catch the women’s slalom on the TV in the dining hall. Nobody seemed to be very interested in the action, seeing as it was not a sport that South Korea does particularly well in. As if to emphasize the point, they showed the entire run of a Korean skier who crossed the finish line in 51st place. I was as surprised by a few things about this. Firstly was that at least 51 people competed in the women’s slalom competition. Secondly was that they bothered to show her entire boring run. It was like watching it in slow motion. Easily the most surprising thing of all however, was that as soon as her time was in the TV crew cut away from the event, and in fact their Olympics coverage entirely. It was as if nobody else mattered at all. Imagine watching track and field, seeing some American fall down halfway into the 5k, and NBC cutting away with Bob Costas saying “well, a valiant effort from the American, but unfortunately luck wasn’t on his side today. Now, onto Days of Our Lives!” Well, needless to say I was some mixture of confused and pissed off. We give many of our athletes no respect. We treat winning a silver medal like some sort of disfiguring scar. It’s something that at best we ignore, and at worst we are disdainful of. I can imagine people meeting Olympic athletes on the street and saying “Oh, I’m so sorry about how things turned out. I mean, it must be really rough. Well hang in there. Chin up. You probably won’t suck so bad next time.” Seriously, a silver medal means that there is only 1 person in the entire world better than them at something. If I was that good at anything I would be ridiculously proud of myself. I’d walk around with a sash and have billboards put up with my face, and below them in enormous bold letters it would say something like “SECOND BEST PAPER COLATER IN THE ENTIRE FUCKING WORLD!!!” And these people do something that actually requires skill and that they be in peak physical condition. Well, except for curling. Here however, I’m pretty sure they would welcome back an 11th place curling team with some sort of parade. They are inordinately proud of their athletes.
This pride in their athletes was shown in many other examples. For instance, I got to see Shani Davis win gold in the 1000 meters about 10 times. This is not because the Koreans have some strange cultural fetish for large, Black, American speed skaters. It is because a Korean won silver. As I said before, winning silver might get somebody a mention in their hometown newspaper in America. Here it is deserving of multiple replays from all possible angles with lots of very exciting yelling. From all the commotion you’d think the Mexican national soccer team had just scored a goal. Another time, one of my professors broke the entire flow of a lecture to announce the “Wonderful, wonderful… marvelous” news that some girl won the gold in the speed skating 500 meters. As an aside, it is also probably worth noting that speed skating is one of the most bizarre sports that any country could possibly dominate in. It’s like dominating ice dancing; it just doesn’t really make much sense why any country would invest that much interest in it. At any rate, the Koreans do really care for some unknown reason. The most vivid example of the Korean investment in its athletes, though, is clearly Kim Yu-Na.
I don’t know if people in America care, or are even aware that Kim Yu-Na dominated figure skating. In America it isn’t considered manly to even be aware that figure skating is a recognized sport. In South Korea I am pretty sure that every single person watched the competition. Kim Yu-Na was already quite popular here before the Olympics, but they brought it to a whole new level. The free skating portion of the competition, which is also the final portion, was on a Friday at 1 PM. This also happened to be graduation for many of the seniors (I don’t understand why they graduate halfway through the second semester, but they do). Because of this, there were a number of parents and grandparents carrying bouquets of flowers. I once again watched in the dining hall. Normally around 1 o’clock the place is pretty empty, as people run off to class, but that day it was absolutely packed. Everybody sat transfixed as the people before her went out on the ice. As soon as it was her turn to skate every person in the building became totally silent. The food preparation stopped, and even the dishwashers came out to watch. Every jump Kim Yu-Na landed was greeted with great applause and cheers. You could feel how tense people were. I think if she had fallen many of the grandparents wouldn’t have survived to watch their grandchildren graduate an hour later. Heart attacks and aneurisms would have swept through the crowd like a grotesque wave. Luckily, this never came to pass. With one final enormous cheer she finished her routine and left the ice to get her score. As soon as it was posted the crowd broke into applause even louder than before. I thought for sure people were about to start throwing flowers at the screen. Even though Kim Yu-Na had just pretty much locked up a gold medal with the world record score she received people stuck around to watch the next skater, a Japanese woman, take her turn on the ice. I was pretty sure that they were all sticking around in the hope that she would fall and they could all take a bit of symbolic revenge on the Japanese for all the invasions and systematic destruction of Korean culture, but instead they let out a long, heartfelt “oooohhh” when she messed up on a jump. I think they would have been much less pleasant and much more riotous had she won, but now they could be nice as it was sure that their skater had won. As soon as the Japanese woman finished everybody immediately poured out of the cafeteria, almost as if they had some place nearly as important to be.
Clearly, being in Korea made following many of the American athletes and teams a very difficult task. Apparently everybody back home was very invested in the American hockey team’s quest for the gold. I hear that the final between the USA and Canada was a fantastic game. I didn’t get to watch of course, because of the time difference and the never-ending hatred NBC has for streaming video outside of the country. I must say, though, that I was much less invested than other people in the outcome of the game. I really only wanted the US to win so I could make fun of the Canadians on my rugby team and down at the pub. I mean more than I normally do. I would honestly have felt a little bad if we had won. What do they have beside hockey, trapping, and occasional sex with moose? It would have been unfair to take away by far the second best of those three things. Plus, it’s not like we’re going to stop making fun of them. They still have French-Canadians, and they aren’t going anywhere.
While watching the Olympics in Korea was strange, so was watching the Super Bowl. While the Super Bowl was a while ago at this point, it was a very strange introduction to Korea. I was around my second week in the country, but like any good American anywhere in the world I had to find a place to watch what is essentially a second Christmas for most people. My local ex-pat pub, Santa Claus Bar, was open for the early morning start of the game. I don’t have any classes that start before 1 PM here, so waking up for the 8:30 start time was a bit of a pain. After a cursory shave and shower I stumbled my way over to the pub. That morning they were luckily serving a nice American breakfast. I decided to have mine with an orange juice to help wake me up. Many other people there had theirs with a pint of beer. Or a rum and coke. Or a couple of rum and cokes. Well, what’s a little drinking on a Monday morning? Honestly, probably alcoholism, but who am I to judge? There were a few fairly bizarre things about the whole situation, along with the all too common aspects. The first and most obvious different thing was the Korean family in Colts jerseys who had camped themselves directly in front of the TV screen. Luckily, with their being Korean, I was able to see over them fairly easily, but it was annoying nonetheless. The next strange thing was the breakfast. I mean, it’s just not Super Bowl food. I wish I could have dug into a huge pizza and a plateful of chicken wings. Unfortunately, these are not foods that Koreans make well, or even palatable. The Korean pizza I have had the displeasure of tasting is one of the more awful things I have been tricked into believing is food in this country. It should be noted for all eternity in some large stone monument that ketchup does not equal tomato sauce, and that large sweet potato wedges are not an acceptable topping on any pizza. While these things were different, some things weren’t. There were still the people who were more interested in the commercials than the game. Hell, next to me I had people discussing the merits of J.D. Salinger’s literary works. I was kind enough to tell them that upon his death some new manuscripts had been found, that I suspected would be published in the not too distant future, and even more kindly refrained from informing them that “The Catcher in the Rye” is a horrible book about some boring over-privileged pain-in-the-ass who needed a handful of Prozac and not a narrator telling the reader what he wasn’t interested in doing. If books were judged on what their protagonist wasn’t interested in doing I should just write my autobiography now and accept all of the literary prizes and royalty checks that come flooding through my door. Back in the world of football, things went quite well, as I like the rest of the US, outside of the unfortunate state of Indiana, was cheering for the winning team. How could anybody possibly cheer for Payton “I’ll shill any product you bring me” Manning over the city of New Orleans? It’s the least we could do after Katrina, other than helping save people or rebuild their city or something. So with that great schadenfreude feeling of watching a team you hate lose the biggest game of the season I walked into the strange afternoon sun and back to school to go study my Korean.
