EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/8skoS.jpg)
But onto the weekend now! It was another exciting weekend of Proleague with Kiett, but this was no ordinary exciting weekend for this one contained a special guest: NeverGG herself! Also Brent (don't know your TL name, sorry) was there too, but while he is cool, he's not celebrity (no offense). Kiett and I started Saturday by getting to the stadium early so we could catch my Air Force ACE vs the evil STX Soul (only evil when they play against my favorite team). We planned to meet NeverGG before the matches, but wound up missing her which still worked out fine because she had a good place to sit for the matches. I finally got to see Canata play live and win over Hyvaa to boot! It was pretty exciting. I gave Kiett a hard time because I've been repeatedly telling her that when ACE (my favorite team) plays SKT (her favorite team), Bisu is going to get sniped by Canata.
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Canata in his postgame interview after winning over Hyvaa. Next came the one, the only Firebathero. Unfortunately he lost a disappointing game to Dear on Swastika Ridge. Quite sad. PianO helped recover it for the team before Iris lost it in the end and ACE fell to STX (and by the end of the weekend, to last in the rankings T_____T). Kal was out and about on Saturday (I guess he's back from boot camp), but he was not played unfortunately. I managed to catch a picture of him during one of the rare moments when he wasn't creeping me out by staring blankly into the audience.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/FuYpP.jpg)
After the match, ACE did a fan meeting which was very considerate of them. I didn't want to bother FBH more than to just wave at him before he left, but I did feel like bugging ggaemo since he had nobody around him! Brent got a picture too, I hope he enjoyed having foreigners come over to say hi to give him some love. It looks like he appreciated it.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/mXry5.jpg)
After that, the anticipated match of the day began. It was SKT vs KHAN. This once again put Kiett and I at odds as KHAN used to be my favorite team (now second to ACE since FBH is over there) and SKT is only my third favorite team. The best part was to start off the day, Stork faced off against Bisu. Kiett had a pretty sign with both of them drawn on it, but did not get shown. Thanks to NeverGG's skills though, she did manage to get the sign appreciated.
The rest of the match was rather exciting though I had to stand out in the lobby because I didn't have a seat anymore for the match. We had gotten lucky for the first match because my friend on the KHAN fan club had seats reserved for his friends that wouldn't be arriving until the second match, so he offered them to Kiett and I for the first match. That guy has been really cool throughout this whole experience in Korea. After the matches, there was a fan meeting for KHAN. During that time, NeverGG decided to come out of retirement briefly for Stork and Roro. She helped get Kiett some pictures with Stork which was really awesome of her. Side note to NeverGG, thanks again for coming along and hanging out with us all day, it was really cool. I don't know if I'll get to see you before I leave Seoul (I have family coming in so I'll have to show them around the city in the coming week), but it was good to get to meet you at least once. Anyway, here are a couple pictures of her at work!
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/QdNtH.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/e0quk.jpg)
But the best part of the day? Jangbi was sick and had to wear a sick mask (he still won his game too). IT WAS ADORABLE. BEHOLD:
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A thousand ^______^'s Get better soon!
After the BroodWar stuff ended, the four of us went over to Children's Grand Park for the Blizzard Cup Finals. Due to the lack of cute boys in the finals, Kiett went with NeverGG to dinner while Brent and I got seats and caught the end of the awards ceremony as well as IU's performance. Needless to say, the finals were amazing. It was a great way to end the year. If you haven't watched the matches yet, go and do that now. I was a little disappointed after game 3 because it honestly looked like it would be a 4-0, but DongRaeGu kept it interesting until the bitter end.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/A2ZJC.jpg)
The post victory toss.
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I hope he enjoys his "Most Improved" trophy because he won't be able to improve anymore than this.
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The trophy was too long and his arms were too short.
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Afterwards, a bunch of people went to Yaletown in Sinchon (if you haven't been, be sure to do so!) for an after party. We played some SC2 on my Korean account for free shots. I left before MizU hit it up, but I'm sure he won a lot of free shots as my account in KR is only on silver. It was a fun time and a good way to catch up with some people that I won't see until I'm back home (which is WAY TOO SOON T___T). Afterwards, it began to snow and since it was so late, Kiett and I headed back to Yonsei while some people stuck around at the party and some left at the same time.
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The truth is there, permanently engraved within the snow.
The next day were good matches as well. Kiett and I met up with Brent at the stadium to find that he had not only secured 3 seats, but those seats were front and center. Sweet! First up was Team 8 vs Woongjin. I was of course pulling for Team 8 because I want a picture with Jaedong and teams have a tendency to leave right away when they lose. For the weekend, all the players got to pick their own little intro song to play when the introductions were happening. Many were humorous, including Baby's use of 'Baby' by Justin Bieber (spelling?).
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/jIrJ6.jpg)
His song choice gave the casters a good chuckle.
Team 8 eventually wound up losing which was very disappointing. They did stick around though afterwards which was nice. Unfortunately, to say there was a massive amount of people crowding Jaedong would have been an understatement. He had so many gifts, he was barely able to hold his gigantic pile as they left. Unable to get a picture with him, Brent and I looked around for other players. For some strange reason, Sea was being left alone. Shocking! We both went up and got our pictures with him.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/YkuCf.jpg)
Jaedong even has his micro working when he's not playing.
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Sea!
Next up was KT vs CJ. I think everyone had an idea of how this was going to go down. Of course CJ needed to lose eventually and KT had to win eventually, but I think very few people would have expected this kind of upset. I know I didn't. Since we were sitting on the KT side, Kiett and I took several pictures of Reach. It took both of us several attempts before we got a picture of him when he was not making a strange face.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/TjSqR.jpg)
KT surprisingly led with Flash which of course ended in a win (poor Horang2 T__T). Then Leta and SkyHigh came out to restore my faith in CJ by putting KT's back against the wall after scoring two wins.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Dv8KB.jpg)
Flash giving a lecture after a pretty standard looking victory.
But then in game 4, something surprising happened. It was a ZvZ involving Hydra and HoeJJa. Of course for this match I was caught between Hydra (yum, I mean what?) and HoeJJa (left handed = OP!). It was a huge surprise when HoeJJa managed to pull out a win. He was pretty happy during his post game interview.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/83Mr3.jpg)
That pushed the series to a game 5 which predictably turned out to be Effort vs Stats (who else could it have been?). Effort is good, but Stats really played the heck out of that game and really earned that win for himself and for KT.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/yymeX.jpg)
High fives all around!
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Hydra sad, SkyHigh confused ("how'd we lose? I thought I won?") and Effort embarassed and disappointed.
By this point in the day, it was 6pm. It had been quite an amazing weekend for BroodWar and Starcraft 2. Kiett, Brent, and I (NeverGG had another engagement and didn't join us for Sunday) stuck around for too long for a KT fan meeting that didn't really result in anything (they lined up, took questions, then without really letting the fans come up and say hi individually, left). We then went back to Sinchon and got dinner before parting ways. I hope if you see this Brent that you had a good flight home. Maybe I'll wind up running into you if I happen to be in your neck of the woods when I'm stateside again.
So a very good weekend for Starcraft this was (when did I suddenly turn into Yoda?). I'll try to sneak in another post this week before my parents show up, but if I don't then have a good rest of the year everyone! I leave Korea on the 26th and stop in Tokyo on my way back to the states. I have a few more posts to make about Korea though, so look out for those sometime in the future.
