I embarrassed my friends, family and country in a volleyball tournament and all I got was this lousy commemorative hand towel...

Yes, that's right, last week was the long awaited teacher volleyball tourney, and as I feared, we did terrible. But there was more to the story than our schools shellacking at the hands of the other schools, so a story I shall tell. I had feared and delighted in the fact that the tourney would be taken much too seriously, given that our school had a warm-up game and many other schools had official uniforms made and had been training on a daily basis. Yep, this ain't no REC bar league, honey. This shits intense. And it was every bit as hilarious as I would have hoped. Our school canceled the afternoon classes, leaving everyone free to head for the courts as soon as lunch was out. On our way to the courts, I found out that Amy and I would not be facing each other, nor would we even be at the same venue. Our much publicized grudge match would not come to fruition (which was probably for the best, considering I would have been crushed and would have never heard the end of it...my only hope would have been to hit Amy several times with spikes to preserve any manner of dignity) as Amy was playing at Yangpyeong High School while we traveled to Gaegun Middle School. Our venue was about 15 minutes outside of town in the opposite direction as my school. One of the foreigners from Yangpyeong works there and wow is he lucky, as least in regard to the facilities. The elementary and middle school were on the same premises and contained a gorgeous grass soccer field (yes, real grass) and an amazing indoor gymnasium/auditorium perfect for volleyball. I just can't wrap my mind around all the sweet shit, given that Gaegun can't be any bigger or affluent than my town, yet I have nothing like that at my school.

Once we arrived, I quickly realized that they are as intense as I had imagined. Both teams playing when we arrived were rocking official uniforms, celebrated each point like they won the friggin match, and one team even had a 10 person plus squad of cheerleaders. How did I know my school had no shot? Well, for starters, these other teams had women on their team that could get serves over the net, which by Korean standards makes them veritable all-stars. No sooner had I arrived than the crowd realized they were in the presence of a volleyball god and I was swarmed with autograph seekers and marriage proposals. I refused, naturally, as I had a volleyball match to win (aside: some of the preceding remarks may have been slightly exaggerated). Soon enough we were taking the court, our school of 63 students and 15 teachers versus one of the middle schools from Yangpyeong with several hundred students and probably 50 or more teachers. Yeah, the odds were stacked against us, as we literally had to field our entire school staff just to have a full 9 man squad for the match. To make matters worse, our vice principal, one of only three teachers that could actually reliably hit the ball, was MIA, meaning that the gym teacher and I were all alone out there. Also to our disadvantage, the other team realized I was tall (damnit, I was hoping to sneak up on them too) and hit away from me the entire game. They spiked my way 4 or 5 times all match and I rejected 2 or 3 back in their face, but generally I was allowed to do anything. Game went as follows normally: other team serves, we return (sometimes) but can't get any decent spike going, so the other team receives easily, sets up for spike, hits away from me and easily scores as nobody else on the team outside of the gym teacher could possibly return it. We also had our fair share of bad serves, running into the net, and hitting balls that were clearly going out of bounds. Yours truly didn't play well either as I missed with my one and only serve, didn't get a chance to stop nearly any spikes and was all too often spiking from too far away, thus leaving them lacking in power and quite easy to shut down. Final score: 35-18. It was uglier than the score, if that was possible, as we fell down 10-1 almost instantly and never recovered. Emblematic of our teams struggles were the Korean teacher and her "serves". God bless her heart she's a sweet lady, but she needed absolute full power and perfect contact in order to just get the ball over the net. After our match was over, we stuck around to see some other schools play, including Carrie, which just made me more angry with the bracketing, as we faced the biggest school first match, otherwise we might have been able to pull out a win. Regardless, my legacy was cemented, as teachers from all the schools came by to give me thumbs up for the performance as well as praise for being tall. I hadn't really realized how much of a height advantage I would have, but I was able on a full leap to get my elbow over the net, while most of my opponents were happy just to get a full hand over the net. Maybe I should give up this teaching thing and just try to win a spot on a professional Korean volleyball team. Yes, they do in fact have a league for that.

Nothing else happened last week, so I'll just jump to the weekend. Saturday was satisfying as my plans actually came to fruition for once. I had planned to see a particular new Korean film and go to the blues club, and I did in fact get to go to both. Take that Korea! Even better was that I also had pretty decent Mexican food for lunch. Now, normally I don't drink beer at 1pm in the afternoon, but its not everyday I get the chance to drink a Negra Modelo and for only 2,000 won (1.50 bucks or something akin to that) more than the Korean shit, why the hell not? From there on is was off to the movie. The movie in question was called "Himalaya, where the wind dwells". Originally I was drawn to it because its the first film in four years for Choi Min-Sik or for most of you, the crazy main character from Oldboy. Yep, that crazy bastard. Now there was no eating of live octopus, but the story still sounded interesting. The main character (Choi) has a immigrant employee die and he is tasked with returning the man's remains to his family. Problem is his family lives in the fuckin mountains of Nepal. The story and dialogue was very minimalist but the film was absolutely gorgeous, as it was basically 90 minutes of breathtaking scenery from the Himalayas. If you don't mind a slow and quiet flick, I heartily recommend it. A pleasant surprise was the fact that the entire thing was subtitled, even though the newspapers made no reference to it. Not like the subtitling was needed, as the vast majority of the spoken dialogue was actually in English between the main character and the young boy of the Nepalese family. I joked that this kid who lives light years from anything has better English than my students, which was true. I'm trying though, I'm trying, honestly. The theater itself was rather amusing as Korea doesn't have the space to build a sprawling, single floor structure like in the States, so they have to get creative. Normally they just take up several floors of one building, but this one was spread out over several buildings. 3 screens and the ticket booth were in one building, while the other 3 screens were in the basement of a building across the street. It made the whole trek to find your screen much more climatic.

The highlight of the evening was clearly the blues club. I had already found the club on a previous occasion, so the drama involved with finding anything in this country was eliminated, thus leaving us free to actually enjoy ourselves. And enjoy we did. My company was small, as most everybody turned into wet blankets (looking at you Jethro!), but still the music and atmosphere were wonderful. Yeah, its pricy, with a 5,000 won cover charge and 10,000 won for a mixed drink (about 15 bucks total), but they didn't pressure us to buy another drink, so it was basically an hour or more concert for 15 bucks. I can live with that. Surprising (or maybe not, given what I know about Korean music) was that all the songs were American rock classics and were all sung in English. It's definitely weird to hear a Korean man who probably seeks little to no English singing a song about an drug that is illegal here and will land one in serious trouble for possession...in English. Yes, he was singing Eric Clapton's Cocaine. And honestly, he didn't sing that poorly. His English was understandable and while his voice was much more gravelly than Sir Eric, it worked for him. Ohh, he could also play the guitar, quite well I might add. The lady on the keyboards was rocking it as well. I'm sure her career choice wasn't what her parents wanted when they signed her up for piano lessons so many years ago, but I was glad she decided to play keyboard for the poor souls in the audience. The clientele were interesting as well, as I was very curious what kind of Koreans would allow themselves to be seen in a place like this and perhaps even enjoy it. There was the expected gathering of young, college aged Koreans who had been exposed to the music, including a particularly gorgeous Korean women who arrived by herself, actually seemed to be enjoying the music, was ordering real alcoholic drinks and was wearing....get this a t-shirt, baseball cap and jeans. Needless to say, Chris and I were in love. Too bad we are both such monster pussies. The waitresses were worth the time of day as well, making the whole experience worth a return appearance by myself. The most amusing point was when a pack of middle aged Korean business men and their wives showed up. The men I could possibly buy (albeit it would be a stretch), but the wives I absolutely couldn't believe were rock and blues enthusiasts. Turns out I was dead on. All of them looked bored and mildly frightened, while one even covered her ears....ahahahahahahahahahahaha. Sorry maam, but there aren't any Koreans dressed in Liberace-esque suits belting out cliche and boring pop ballads down here. Too bad. You have no idea how happy I was to see everybody on stage performing in just t-shirts and jeans. I might have cried if they had been rocking on stage in the Korean enormous dorky horn-rimmed glasses, ridiculously tight pants, shiny suits, etc and overall way too primped and prepared manner. Thank God or some other deity for small victories.