Wanderer: World Championships Daegu

The last week in August the World Championships for Track and Field events started. They just so happened to be in Daegu, South Korea of all places. My best friend Kalie conveniently lives in Daegu as well. Hadley, Clayton and I decided we should head on down for the first weekend of the events. We got tickets for the morning events on Saturday. It was super cool to go see the professional athletes competing in Korea.

I got to Kalie’s late Friday night. We got up early on Saturday morning to go watch the women’s marathon, which was running by through her neighborhood, go figure! It was awesome. We then went to the stadium to watch the rest of the events. We saw some pole vaulting, long jump, shot put, steeplechase, and a couple sprinting events. On one of the heats for the 100m women’s run there was a Korean women who won… the crowd went wild! It was funny; of course I had to take a picture of it.

The prius was the sponsor car of the games! Loved it... I had to take a picture of my car. Oh funny story actually. When I first got to Daegu at night Kalie met me where the taxi drops me off for her house. She said right before I got there she saw a white prius and waved it down thinking it was me... She forgot for a second we were in Korea not Minnesota. Oh Kalie.

Kalie and Clayton preparing for the marathon to come by us.

The women's marathon

Right outside the Daegu stadium... tents to the right, grass we hung out at for a bit to the left.

The view of Daegu from right outside the stadium.

Nice mountains right outside the stadium.

Steeplechase

more steeplechase...

They had these sweet machines to clean the sand pit with... I thought you'd appreciate this one dad!

Clayton and Hadley

Kalie and I.

We saw on the screen the finish of the marathon.

This is the Korean women who won the 100m race.

Daegu Stadium

Clayton went and bought us ice cream.... Check out Kalie's face on this one. What a pig!

After the races we hung out for a while outside the event wandering around and eating some food. Clayton headed to the health tent to get his blood pressure taken which was really high….

The guy said “oh wow, you’re blood pressure is really high. Have you eaten anything lately?”

Clayton told him “No I don’t think so. I ate a popsicle over an hour ago”

Aren’t you the one that was sitting over there in the grass?

Yes.

I saw you eat bibimbap and then you ate ice cream about 10 minutes ago.

Oh, yea. I guess I did eat recently…

It was soooo funny. He came back pretty embarrassed. Haha. After he got back, Hadley wanted to get herself tested too. Hers didn’t go to well either. She ended up getting her blood pressure taken and halfway through the test the power went out in the tent so the machine got stuck to her arm. It was hilarious. Poor Hadley’s arm was stuck in this machine for a good 10 minutes. Finally they were able to get power by stringing an extension cord from a couple tents over. The staff there felt so bad and brought her over a bunch of free little gifts to apologize.

Hadley's arm is stuck! Trying to find some power... Haha.

The extension cord has finally arrived! Haha

Saturday evening we headed out to a restaurant to have some kimchi pancakes and makkoli. The restaurant was like a little hut; it is super cool and unique. We stayed there for a while and then headed to downtown Daegu to meet up with some of Kalie’s friends. It was a great night although we didn’t see any athletes, which was a little disappointing. Haha. The next morning we slept in and headed to downtown to eat some good American breakfast food. It was delicious, as always, I love breakfast food. Hadley and I went to chill at a Starbucks after brunch and relax till we headed back towards home. It was a very fun weekend with my good friends.

The sweet hut restaurant

Hadley and I with the kettle full of Makkoli. Keeping it classy at this restaurant!

The bell dinger... reminded us of when Kalie and I used to ring a bell for my sister Angie to serve us popcorn when we'd watch a movie downstairs. Haha