Everybody Plays Volleyball

Because she asked nicely, I can relate to this haiku by Emily Jennings:

“Goddamnit, I’m your teacher,

not a snack machine.

Get your own candy.”

This weekend was a big deal for foreigners on Jeju. The Jeju Furey Beach Volleyball Tournament was held up north at Iho Beach. Here’s a link to an article about the event:

http://www.jejuweekly.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=2620

Here are some photos of our team at our tent:

A lot of players and teams take this tournament very seriously. Our team was put together at the last minute, which was actually a tremendous job by the tournament’s coordinator, Dan Nabben, although our team name, “We Came For the Free Sand”, was kind of stupid. Which is my fault, since I picked that title, but then I changed my mind when it was too late to change my mind.

Our team consisted of myself, a couple visiting the girl’s hospitalized brother for the weekend, a guy who came back to Jeju because his boat fell apart, a Korean who didn’t speak any English, and a mystery ghost who never actually showed up to play. This turned out to be wonderful since the whole time we were able to pull someone from one of the better teams to play for us. Thanks, Jihee!

Anyway, as in November, I was torn between what level of competition I wanted to prepare myself for. Did I want to spend the whole weekend drinking, or did I want to try to show off my volleyball skills?

Thankfully I didn’t have to choose. Eventually I couldn’t help but realize that I am an athlete and I was born to be competitive and win everything I do. I realized this after about four cans of beer.

And win we did. On Saturday our team went 11-1, probably because we in the ‘D’ bracket, the lowest of four levels of competition on the beach (the tournament structure is a little convoluted but its designed for different levels of play).

Saturday night there was a dance party but I didn’t have a great time since my wallet was missing. Also this weird guy who showed up to the tournament dropped the n-word and he scared me.

Because I didn’t my money, I didn’t wind up drinking that much, but I wound up waking up with a splitting hangover headache anyway, since I’d just spent 17+ hours on a hot beach and probably didn’t drink enough water.

I most certainly ate enough fajitas though. Those things just kept coming into my mouth. All of my meals on the weekend were wrapped in tortillas, even late Sunday night, where I had to quickly order a burrito and catch the last bus back to Seogwipo. The fajitas were great. Probably the best thing about the tournament. Except for when I found my wallet. That was even greater.

Sunday got crazy on the court for our team as we started having to play “good” teams, and we moved all around the tournament bracket until we landed all the way in the “b” section, where we managed to lose to the “censored sets”, which kind of bothered me since one of their players constantly attacks my fashion statements, particularly cowboy hat. I wanted to beat them and beat while wearing my cowboy hat. We didn’t. I learned nothing from the experience.

At some point in the day, an escaped convict swam from his island prison and landed on the beach, where he confusedly observed a bunch of teachers playing volleyball:

Even though he was a convicted killer, he was kind enough to take this photo with me before he continued on his way out of the country:

Speaking of manly men, here’s an action shot of Terry The Enforcer, who works for my biker gang. He gets pulled into action when we need to lock down our control of a neighborhood. To give you an idea of how dangerous he is, some asshole insulted our gang on the internet a few weeks ago, and I haven’t even SEEN him since.

In addition to being an excellent visual of what Canadians look like when they try to play volleyball, this gives you a good idea of what the layout of the beach is like. The beach has about a dozen volleyball courts. The ocean would be behind the photographer in this photo. There are blue tents set up for the teams just along the berm, which I’m calling a berm, but it’s not really a berm since you can’t really sit on it. The berm/hill (bermy hill?) runs along the entire length of the beach. Up on top of the berm/hill is where the fajitas are and where people camped for the night.

More pictures:

It’s pretty amazing how within the contained bubble of Jeju island, this relatively small group of foreigners (and some Koreans) can come together and create an even tighter bubble where amateur beach volleyball takes on grand significance. It feels as if at least half the foreigner on the island either take part in the tournament, volunteer, or come and watch/drink beer. That’s intense.

This is an island of dreams. Everybody has a dream. Some people want to be star athletes. Others want to be great poets. Some people want to be both. Some people already are.

Jeju is like Never Never Land. Or maybe more like high school. Except the bus that takes you home is actually a plane that takes you across an ocean for 15 hours and costs $ 1000 to fly in economy class.