VOLLEYBALL AT LAST!! Oct 14th-15th

I'm sooo happy!!! The best thing about the weekend that just passed was that Anne and I have found a place we can play volleyball!!! But first things first...

Saturday, Oct 14th
My coteacher HaeKyong took us (Lindsay, Natasha, Anne and I) to see the show Nanta. The best thing was that we got good seats for 30% off because we were donating books. The original price was 50,000 won for the seats but would've ended up costing us around 35,000. The problem was that I am very forgetful and I forgot to bring my book with me for the discount. HaeKyong was providing the other 4 books. I felt like such an idiot. I was willing to pay the full price if need be but the girls were nice enough to offer to chip in. I would've just paid the difference myself. Anyway, Haekyong said that there might be a bookstore around there that we could buy some book and donate it. But once we got into that area there were absolutely no bookstores around. I resigned to the fact that I would've had to pay extra. But for some reason I felt hopeful. As we walked to the entrance I noticed this street vendor that had all her goods laid out. She was selling used items such as suits, hats, bags, shoes, fur scarves. I approached it thinking maybe she sells books and LO AND BEHOLD!! THERE WAS A BOOK! I reached for it and asked how much.. 1000won.. for those back home, thats equivalent to a little more than $1!!! SCORE!! honestly I am soo lucky!! So we ended up paying the discounted amount yay! and the show was incredible! It REALLY WAS!
The show is a drumming show about 4 cooks and one restaurant manager. There were only 5 ppl on the cast. It was very good because they involved the audience, the performers were incredible. They knew how to sing, to dance, to drum and they were hilarious. They even made soup as they drummed out the beat with knives on vegetables. IS THAT NOT INCREDIBLE.. altho only 2 ppl (from the audience) got to drink the soup. It really was incredible. I loved everything about it. they had very little talking but there were english parts. I could not stop laughing throught the entire show. O did I mention two of the actors were soo good looking and very very built. haha there was one guy who's role was "sexy guy" hahah.. (ladies, isn't he sexy) . LOL... and if you don't think they're good looking.. you should've seen them without their clothes.. phew.. (sorry Nem)
From my last posting about volleyball we were told that we should come into the gym on sunday and that we would be able to play. We tried hard not to have any expectations because with the language barrier that could mean a lot of things. We showed up about 20 minutes earlier than 3pm which was what time we were told to come and it turned out that there were a bunch of other people playing a scrimmage. A second glance at the game unveiled that there were a lot more ppl on the court than normal. It turns out the women on the court were playing 9 womens!

When we first went in we had no idea if this was pick-up or what-not. We didn't spot the coach of the Inha University vball team so we just randomly asked the guy approaching us if we were allowed to play. He smiled as if he anticipated our arrival. He led us to this other girl and told us to stretch with her. Thank god I was flexible enough because he went over to Anne and started pushing her down on various stretches to make her reach further and truth be told, it looked very painful. But that would turn out to be the least painful thing we had to do. For about 2 hours we were made to volley, then bump to the wall and everytime we would pause to watch the intense game going on behind our backs the guy (Mr. Chong) would come and tell us to go back to doing the same thing.

This may have sounded very tedious but I was very appreciative because they were giving us individual attention and giving us pointers along the way. I knew that I was doing something wrong and I know I have a lot of bad habits. But if u can imagine, volleying to the wall for an hr is a very long time even with breaks in btwn and my arms were sooo sore. It was back to the basics which I liked but that being said.. I was dying to play.... Every INCH OF MY body was dying to just pepper and the touch of the ball, who knew it could feel soo satisfying. After the initial volleying and bumping we spotted the original guy who had told us about this place.
If I didn't mention this to you I should do so now, this guy would stand out in a crowd ANYWHERE he is A GIANT! he has huge broad shoulders too! He was also very good looking (hehe Hi Nem). Well we started talking to him, he's the head coach which we knew already but more than that he's 197 cms tall.. the dude is almost 2 ms!! YIKES! AND HE WAS AN EX-NATIONAL VBALL PLAYER.. after watching us bump and volley to the wall he came over and started to give us more pointers.. he showed us a different drill to bump the balls.. and to volley the ball.. and he just stood around to watch to make sure we were doing it right. Every once in a while he would stop us and give us little pointers.. I was IN HEAVEN!!
Then right around 4:30ish.. they started to put up the men's height and I realized that the ex-national vball player (Mr. choi cheon sik (I googled him)) was going to play. We asked if we could watch him play and he nodded. Our arms felt like lead at this point. The game was incredible, it was basically 6s vs 9 men(1 woman). It was amazing! and I couldn't believe this was a sort of pick-up... after a watching for a while..I was itching to play or even just to pepper the ball so I asked anne if she would like to pepper.. she didn't want to so I approached one of the guys to see if they wanted to pepper. the only dude that agreed to ended up subbing someone else in and the other guy declined bc he was tired and they asked this girl if she would be willing.. She was about to when she said that it might not be a good idea to pepper now bc it may distract the game. Feeling rather rejected I went back to sit down, but when the game finally ended Anne agreed to go pepper with me. As we were heading to the court we were approached by the guy who was subbing in and he asked me where we were from and eventually I asked him if I could try to hit one.
The embarassing thing was that because it was men's height they all stopped to watch me. Thank god I hit it well enough and so from then on they were sort of cheering us on. I LOVE KOREANS! THEY ARE SOOOO CUTE!
Afterwards they started to play a game of pick-up and we were put on separate teams. I was soo hyped up by this point and I was soo glad that I was playing well. You know when you really just feel like u're having an on game? That was me. The odd thing was that they were playing sixes... 9men style. i.e. no rotation, 4 ppl up front 2 back court, and we just rotated serving.. I started off back court and after the first set THEY PUT ME IN FRONT COURT!! AHHH!! haha MIDDLE!! middle seemed more appropriate bc A) the setter can block for me, and B) i got to play both defense and offense..at one point I got soo into the game that I accidentally went up for a fake, and ended up faking my own team.. haha the power hitter actually thought I was going to hit the ball that was way too high.. and he caught the ball!! we had a good laugh about it.

I love that feeling when you feel like u've earned their respect! They asked us out for soju afterwards but we weren't prepared for that since we had been planning to head home to finish our lesson plans. The funny thing was that after the pickup we were introduced to the general manager of the team and the coach and they made us sit down in the circle as if we were part of the team.. i have no idea whats going on at this point. But HOPEFULLY WE MADE SOME SORT OF TEAM!!