Rugby Overdose! Saturday I went to a KTA touch tournament in Onsu. After being here for over a month, one would assume that I would finally stop getting lost all of the time, but no dice. I showed up about a half an hour late, but with enough time to change, eat and apple and talk smack before our first game. The tournament was a really good combination of Koreans and Foreigners with a rather large splattering of the Maoris, Samoans and other Polynesians who always seem to beautifully dominate such tournaments. Touch tournaments always remind me that I am not very useful outside of full contact rugby, but they encourage me to try different approaches I wouldn't normally try. For example....actually learning how to pass a ball before I am hit! Once we got a rhythm going it was actually quite impressive and my team mates are pretty fantastic. Of course, I wouldn't be me if something didn't go wrong and I managed to break my finger in the first game and continued to play like a fool. Ashamed to admit I actually broke my finger by jamming it off of some buff Korean (high school kids) chest. I really need to come up with a better story.
If Saturday wasn't enough, we headed to Cheonan Sunday morning for a full day of rugby, Korean formality and shenanery. The field we played on had temple seating, which is the coolest and craziest thing I have ever seen. Imagine playing to that backdrop? We were warmly welcomed and immediately the organizers yelled something in Korean at some boys sitting under a tent. They began gathering their things and making space for us. There was an opening ceremony for, which was nothing short of brilliant and incredibly strange. I am not certain if it was dance, martial arts or circus, but it was definitely something to see. My favorite part was watching the shirtless Korean man shove a nail through a board using his chest!
Our first match was against ourselves as a sort of "Foreigners play rugby in Korea" spectacle. I didn't realize how out of shape I was, until I started sucking wind about 5 minutes into the game; a bit shocking, considering we were playing 10's instead of 7's.
Our next match was against a boys "middle school" team. Now I have no idea what they put in the water here, but these boys were ridiculously mannish to be in high school As a matter of fact, two minutes into the game, I took one of the hardest hits I have ever taken in my life. I'm not a big girl, but I am definitely hard to take off my feet...or so I thought. The game was actually incredibly challenging, but it was awesome to watch the team playing at a much higher level than we were when we scrimmaged ourselves. Although, I must say there was a lot more groping than I am used to, which is saying a lot because women's rugby is full of gropers!
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| The Cheonan Boys |
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Stiff arming the "children"
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These boys ran circles around us and it was an awesomely fun game! Afterwards we were fed some of the best fried chicken I've ever had, given beer and asked to take part in a "ceremony." Korea has this habit of being wonderfully formal in very interesting settings. All the teams lined up in rows, they played some music and made presentations in Korean that I didn't understand. Then they presented us with a plaque, which Natalie graciously accepted, despite the fact we could not read it!
5 people (who looked very important) came up to speak and we clapped after each one. Then at the end, this crazy Korean lady who was acting as DJ for the day, began playing Gangnam style and asked us to dance. I love to take a every opportunity I can to be an an idiot. This was the result:
All in all it was an excellent day of rugby, which we ended by going to the Cheonan world dance festival, where I ran into this little character! She is so much cooler than I was when I was a kid!
