FIVB - International Womens VolleyBall in Quba

This last weekend Quba hosted a qualifying round for the 2010 FIVB volleyball championship that will be held in Japan. Teams from Azerbaijan, Israel, Ukraine, Belarus and others came to compete.
週末、グバ市にバレーボール大会あった！アゼルバイジャン、イスラエル、ウクライナやベラルーシのチーム来た。
Here to the left you see the Azerbaijani team lined up for the singing of their national anthem. The version played here at the games sounded alot like an awesome old James Bond opening credits theme.
これはアゼルバイジャンのチームだ。



Isreal vs Belarus.
イスラエル　VS　ラルーシ












Former President Heydar's everpresent gaze, watching over his country.













At every event Ive gone to see at the Olympic Center there is always a special section roped off for the soldiers. Its gotta be great R&R for them...plus the always clap & cheer the loudest for Azerbaijan....and boo the loudest for everyone else.

グバ市にある大会いっぱい軍人いつも来る。







I went with some fellow PCVs and we got to sit in the VIP seating because on of the volunteers is family with some big-wigs with the Israeli team.
On my left was the Ukranian Embassy delagation, big guy in the middle is the Ukranian Ambassador to Azerbaijan who seems like a really friendly guy. Despite losing to Isreal he promised to send their team a bottle of vodka in thanks for the vigourous competition.
ボランチアー友達と一緒に見に行った。友達のイスラエル人の家族も来たからわしら外国VIP所に腰にかけた。　これはウクライナの大使だ。すごい優しい奴だ。






Here we have some of the Israeli spectators waving something one doesn't often see waved in a Muslim country.











But of course, a PCVs work is never over. Morning, day or night, weekday & weekend, at the office, on the street & in our homes we are always on duty. This became apparent when I & my sitemate started getting urgent texts from contacts in the Ministry of Youth & Sports. It seems the translator fell through and the organizors of this event needed someone to help translate the press-releases from Azerbaijani to "təmiz inglisca"="clean English". Quba Qang PCVs came to the rescue. I, with translating experience and the Y-chromosome necesary to talk to the male officials and be taken seriously, and my sitemate, Amy, with her superior knowledge of the rules and terminology of volleyball. Not to knock our Azerbaijani abilities but its a good thing that reporter/official spoke decent beginner level English because we could read his notes to save our lives. In the end we translated his press releases fairly well and got invitations to meet him again at the central offices in Baku someday.