Volleyball!

For weeks my co-workers have been bugging me to join their volleyball team. They meet every Wednesday in the gym at 3pm and play. Unfortunately, since I teach one of my advanced adult classes at that time I haven't been able to participate. Fast forward to this past Wednesday. We are all having lunch and our PE teacher once again asks me if I can play volleyball that day. He proceeded to tell me that today wasn't a practice, but that we were travelling to another elementary school to play against the teachers there. I told him if he could convince my teachers (students) to agree to postpone our class and convince our principal to allow me to participate that I would definitely play. Ten minutes later he was in my office and told me to go change and get ready to go play. We drove to Gudeok Elementary which is 10 minutes from our school to meet the other teachers. I had no idea which of our teachers would be participating and I was fairly shocked at the group I saw. It included our vice principal, who is in his 60's, a Korean Language teacher who is 57 and 7 others who are 40 or younger. The women played their match first. Our team got beat pretty badly. Then it was on to the men's match. I was told I would be playing up at the net to take advantage of my height. The very first play I went up and blocked one of their spike attempts and won the point. My team and the women teachers who were watching went wild and were chanting my name. From that point on I got set up for a spike almost every time and usually converted. I was amazed at how seriously everyone took the match and thankfully we won handily. The next day at school my celebrity status was at an all time high since word of my volleyball skills spread around. Even my principal was delighted by my ability and I hope this helps my cause to get out from under my teacher outing ban. I also learned that every summer my city holds a big teacher volleyball tournament and it's supposedly a big deal. I was told that I was their only hope at winning the tournament and the other school's principals would be scouting me during the rest of our tune up matches. Talk about pressure to perform.

I had one of our female teachers take pictures of our match.

The men's and women's team. Those aren't peace signs the ladies are holding up. Korean's do that in every picture and it supposedly means victory but I really have no idea.