Every spring, Troy MacLellan and Dan Nabben talk about doing a motorcycle trip on the mainland and every other summer they actually do it. But in 2012, for their third tour, it would be different - on account of Lisa Kelley. Her Arirang show, Travelbug, would feature a ten-minute segment where she would talk to the men and they would discuss how their trip was going up to that point.

Lisa Kelley, as she did in the week before BVB 7, surprised us with a donation of 500,000krw while on the air during the first few days which turned the trip into a pledge drive for Jeju Furey. All Troy and Dan had to do was make it to Seoul in two weeks and Lisa would do the rest. Almost single-handedly, Lisa raised over 1.4 million krw, including domestic and international donations!

The radio bits along with daily facebook posts and the appearance on Arirang TV’s Korea Today are all available here:
Week 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QBB5e3az-k
Week 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1KYjY1j9Uo
Finale: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvd4btSZIWk
Korea Today: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcRfBV2R0Ds

Special thanks to all those who donated and to Sara Sokola for all her help while on vacation in the U.S.

…Swing BVB 3. The clinic ended on a Saturday and this tournament took place the following day. It also grew from its predecessor, boasting 114 players and 19 teams, and raised 381,857won. The champions of the C, B, and A brackets were ‘Turtle Power’, ‘Sangre, Sugor, y Làgrimas’, and ‘Super Monkey Frog Power’, respectively.

Once again Miriah Lawrence and her crew came up huge with lunches and Alexis & David Kirchner held the fort all day as volunteers. Special thanks to Tim Hornbrook, Troy MacLellan, Dave & Karma Lee Cunning, and others helping with the clean-up.  Additinally, DTS internet news service came by with their crane camera and captured much of the atmosphere of the event – and 김현승 (Nopy) was responsible for that. 

Thank you to everyone who had a hand in creating another great event!

This was not a fundraising event per se. There were no sponsorships, no entrance fees, just a chance for women to get instruction on how to play beach volleyball from an international professional, 한지연 (Han Jee’yeon). Click here for more articles, videos and pictures on this event.

Over 40 women signed-up and came out to the four evening sessions for Korean women and the one session open to foreigner-women. Although only originally asked to do two-and-a-half-hour sessions, 한지연 went one, one and a half, and two hours overtime each day. The women brought a great desire to learn and improve and 한지연 fed off of that which led to the extensions in time.

Special thanks to Tim Hornbrook, Elizabeth Holbrook, Sarah Jo Turrittin, E’vone Starks, Liz Church, Dan Quick, and Troy MacLellan for helping out and allowing 한지연 to give more personal attention to the participants. 한지연 ‘s own dedication to the event is even more remarkable when you factor in that she was doing it all for free and didn't take all that much convincing to come down to Jeju in the first place.

We had met in early June and over ice cream at a Baskin Robbins in 홍대 (Hong Dae) we went through the details, motive, and importance of offering an event of this nature and of having a professional (and even someone/some celebrity on board). Within a couple hours we had a an agreement worked out; a clinic in the evenings during the week and one Saturday session, then capped-off with a tournament on a Sunday…

Lisa Kelley’s introduction to, and involvement with Jeju Furey, has been written about in posts on the Facebook group page but here is a summary.

Long story short, it all started when former Arirang radio host, Genie Hahn, contacted Dan Nabben to do an interview for Arirang leading up to the Christmas Orphanage Drive in December 2011. That interview led to an appearance on Arirang for a New Year’s Eve show co-hosted by Lisa Kelley (in Seoul) and Genie Hahn (in Jeju). Susan Shain accompanied Dan and they were joined by Aida Matulevičiūtė in the studio to add some Jeju flavour and commentary to the show. If you listen to the broadcast you can catch where Dan and Susan were trying to plug Jeju Furey but just couldn’t quite get the conversation to go in that direction. :-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssLC7_wLM_Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4_zMkP8hNU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZMJ52bN61g

A few weeks after the show, Dan sent an email to Arirang that was addressed to Lisa Kelley and acted as an introduction to Jeju Furey and its cause. It included the MBC-TV piece on BVB 6 (props to Kendra Pugh, once again) as well as links to Tracie Barrett’s article for Yonghap news, Nicole Erwin’s piece for Jeju Weekly, Kristyn Taylor’s article for the Korea Herald, 이미리’s piece for 제주소리, and the Facebook group page.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9SgAikTeDQ
http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/n_feature/2011/05/04/48/4901000000AEN20110504009600315F.HTML
http://www.jejuweekly.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=1221
http://www.koreaherald.com/national/Detail.jsp?newsMLId=20120418001273
http://www.jejusori.net/news/quickViewArticleView.html?idxno=100243

A couple months later, around March or April, Cade Akers was interviewed for Arirang’s Morning Call show. The interview went well and Cade was asked if he knew of anyone else on Jeju that might be interested in being on the show, so Cade recommended Dan. Arirang contacted Dan and another interview was done.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PO40InthmmU&feature=youtu.be

Afterwards, Dan asked Morning Call writer, Tina Shin, if she could forward an email (the one sent a couple months earlier) on to Lisa Kelley directly. Tina agreed and shortly thereafter Lisa contacted Dan and another interview was setup: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aUnonXUgRY&feature=youtu.be

Following the interviews, Lisa made an offer to Dan in which he would be on the show twice a week and talk of upcoming events on Jeju for about 8 minutes. Dan couldn’t help but recommended Troy who agreed. And all of this led to Motorbiking the Mainland 2012 (see the summary of that event below).

At this point Lisa became heavily involved in Jeju Furey in terms of finding ways to help promote it, raise money for it, and improve its events. She met with Troy and Dan several times as her work requires her to come to Jeju one to three times a month as the host of a TV quiz show, for conferences, concerts, and other events. She also treated Dan and took him to a variety of places where he could meet other people who would be interested in helping Jeju Furey.  In particular this occurred while he was in Seoul and was able to meet with Han Jee'yeon (한지연) for the first time.

Lisa made an appearance during BVB Clinic 1, donated hundreds of thousands of won to Jeju Furey, raised hundreds of thousands more, got Troy and Dan on TV to plug Jeju Furey as well as several radio appearances, and introduced them to several important people in Korean who are in positions able to help Jeju Furey, and many of those people already have. She was also a fantastic host to Troy, Dan, Sara Sokola, Ryan Brown, and Matt Leman when they were all in Seoul for Seoul Furey BVB 1.

She has been quite the force since ‘coming aboard’ in May, and we are all incredibly grateful that she has taken on interest in our organization.

Thanks, Lisa.