Every single teacher in Waegwan met up at this one school to play volleyball. I say "play", but it was a tournament. I cannot stress to you how serious they are about volleyball here. The teachers cannot even have a rest day without getting all competitive on each other. I dislike competition. Each school had their own tent, and people were outfitted with drums and noisemakers and even those "thunder sticks" that you sometimes see at baseball games:
If you look at the mountain right there next to the apartment building, and turn your head sideways to the left, you will notice that it looks like the profile of a face. It is a special mountain, the birthplace of the current president, a very special place in Korea.
So I titled this blog something about how I got kicked off the team. At the time I didn't really care, because they knew that I wasn't a volleyball player, but they asked me to play on the team anyway. The irritating thing is how they chose to kick me off. We were taking some warm up hits, and I hit the ball once, (and I was holding my hands improperly), a fact that must have made them cringe, because when the ball came around to me again, (I had better form), but the ball did not really go up in the air or go toward any player, and I was shooed off the court. The more I think about it, the ruder it becomes in my mind. I understand that there's a language barrier between us, and they couldn't say, "No, Paul, it's ok, you have proven to us that you actually DON'T play volleyball, haha!" But don't just push me off the court and say "no, no..." I don't care how serious you are about competition. What if I had started crying? You're lucky I'm such a light-hearted person. I have heard that everything that you do in Korea is written down, even the tiniest things, in case they ever need to use anything against you. This experience has definitely been "written down" in my mind and I will not forget it for a long time. I wish that I had started crying.
But, really and truly, it was a funny moment. Micah thought that it was really funny, so did Jerome. Jerome is drinking a Budweiser. It was like 11 AM:
I went to a Korean war memorial:
Behind me, there's a cool logo on the plane, check it out:
These are flags of all of the countries that helped out the South Koreans in the war. The American flag is there, it is in the very front of course, behind one of the guns. It was funny to me because those machines were not replicas, and the tires were made in China:
Sometimes I wonder why certain pictures are chosen to be placed certain places. For example, the one below. I mean, I know that OF COURSE the North Koreans are bad people, but how blatant is the brainwashing in the caption of the picture?!! I mean, why did they have to show that picture in particular? (NPKA means North Korean People's Army):
My mogijang is doing fine though. Mogi = mosquito. I severely dislike being awoken by the buzzing in my ear, so I bought a mogijang. Mosquito net. I mentioned it in an earlier blog posting I think:
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