This is Part 5: Archery, Inception and a Burger
Archery
As part of orientation, we signed up for various optional extracurricular activities. I signed up to participate in Archery. Three days ago, a group of us went to the former training grounds for the Korean Olympic Archery team to learn from a former Olympics coach (who now coaches other Olympic coaches). The Korean archery team is famous for being one of--if not--the best in the world, often sweeping gold medals at the Olympic Games.
We're newbies, so these targets were ten meters away.
Olympic distance is 70meters away; the ones way in the back covered in the green tarp.
The scenery was nice.
The bows...
The man in blue whose back is to us is the coach.
Me, Nora, and Grace.
I hit two "bulls-eye"s, one red, and the rest blue, black or white. One friend from Montana had only tried this once for twenty minutes but hit nearly every arrow in the bulls-eye mark. She had gone hunting with rifles before (Montana) and said the principles were similar.
Trying.
Yes, it was as fun as it looks.
I woke up Sunday morning to a knock on my door at 9:35AM. There were Clint and John ready to go, and there I gazed back dazed with only my boxers on. "You ready?" I asked them the time, and told them that they should leave without me, that I will catch up with them later. They left.
In truth, I awoke at around 9AM, but concluded that sleep had precedence to a day trip and committed to roaming around in that ambiguous world between dream and reality (an eerie foreshadowing if I may say so). My friends and I had decided to leave at 9:30AM to catch the bus to spend the day in the near-by city Cheong-ju, where we would see Inception.
They left without me, and after some pondering, something told me I may regret not going. So I readied myself and took the bus an hour later, prepared to spend a good day in Cheong-ju whether or not Serendipity would help me find my friends.
So I arrived, and after some walking found myself along a pedestrian-only strip that spanned numerous blocks. I took the above picture with a self-timer in what I would soon find out to be a shabbier part of town.
I quickly found myself among a crowd of people who on Sunday afternoon had shirts to try on, pastries to eat and stories to share over lunch at cute restaurants. Having spent the past few weeks among the green hills and farming fields of agrarian Goesan, I found the density of people and businesses refreshing and enlivening.
I continued to meander down this seemingly unending yellow-brick road, awe-struck by this Wonderland, wondering how I ever fell into this rabbit hole. I was lost, dumbfounded, and blinded. My aural, visual, olfactory senses were all consumed by the newness of everything.
Just gonna stand there watch me burn...That's alright because I like the way it hurts...
See that black box smack-dab in the middle of the picture, right under the letter M of "Missha" with a little circle on top? That speaker suddenly blared Love the Way You Lie by Eminem ft. Rihanna, and I couldn't help but be warped back to the USA and think of all that I left behind...
In any case, I was looking for a movie theater. I found the first and asked the attendant if she had seen a group of four foreigners that included one black male and another tall red-head male (Clint and John Keith respectively). She said no, and told me to try another movie theater down the block. I knew they would be in the movie by now, so all I had to figure out was which one.
As I got lost, I found a burger place called "Lotteria," the Korean version of McDonald's (though have no doubt I passed by a McDonald's as well). I decided to have lunch there for cheap, and let me tell you the sight of a burger was a humbling experience.
How much time and effort was put into that man who thought up the burger? Who was that genius who decided to make a sandwich of glorious and most holy components? What compelled him/her/it to create that food-of-the-gods, that mouth-savoring compilation of cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and...BEEF?!
Needless to say, the #2 was an excellent choice for lunch. But I admit that my expectations were greater than reality. It was a welcome change, however.
So I find this second movie theater, ask the attendant there who says she thinks she saw them. I sneak into the movie theater clearly showing it, and walk up unnoticed and watch the final 2 hours of the film (I spotted them and moved next to them halfway through--to their surprise of course).
Needless to say, that was a mind-bending movie much in the same ways The Matrix, or The Truman Show, or supposedly Shutter Island was. I could write a whole entry on this as well but I won't because that's not the crux of the story...it's really more about the trip. I will say though that the movie was the topic of discussion for at least the following two hours (to the pain of my ears, unfortunately). We returned from Cheong-ju to Goesan by dinner time and prepped for our quiz Monday (yesterday).
The trip was well worth my time and energy. I'm glad civilization, media, and burgers do in fact exist in Korea (hyperbole of course; Seoul is one of the top 5 most populated cities in the world).
PS: I read DFW's Consider the Lobster on the hour-long bus ride to Cheong-ju and DFW is a genius. I can't stop reading his prose.
In truth, I awoke at around 9AM, but concluded that sleep had precedence to a day trip and committed to roaming around in that ambiguous world between dream and reality (an eerie foreshadowing if I may say so). My friends and I had decided to leave at 9:30AM to catch the bus to spend the day in the near-by city Cheong-ju, where we would see Inception.
They left without me, and after some pondering, something told me I may regret not going. So I readied myself and took the bus an hour later, prepared to spend a good day in Cheong-ju whether or not Serendipity would help me find my friends.
So I arrived, and after some walking found myself along a pedestrian-only strip that spanned numerous blocks. I took the above picture with a self-timer in what I would soon find out to be a shabbier part of town.
I quickly found myself among a crowd of people who on Sunday afternoon had shirts to try on, pastries to eat and stories to share over lunch at cute restaurants. Having spent the past few weeks among the green hills and farming fields of agrarian Goesan, I found the density of people and businesses refreshing and enlivening.
I continued to meander down this seemingly unending yellow-brick road, awe-struck by this Wonderland, wondering how I ever fell into this rabbit hole. I was lost, dumbfounded, and blinded. My aural, visual, olfactory senses were all consumed by the newness of everything.
Just gonna stand there watch me burn...That's alright because I like the way it hurts...
In any case, I was looking for a movie theater. I found the first and asked the attendant if she had seen a group of four foreigners that included one black male and another tall red-head male (Clint and John Keith respectively). She said no, and told me to try another movie theater down the block. I knew they would be in the movie by now, so all I had to figure out was which one.
As I got lost, I found a burger place called "Lotteria," the Korean version of McDonald's (though have no doubt I passed by a McDonald's as well). I decided to have lunch there for cheap, and let me tell you the sight of a burger was a humbling experience.
How much time and effort was put into that man who thought up the burger? Who was that genius who decided to make a sandwich of glorious and most holy components? What compelled him/her/it to create that food-of-the-gods, that mouth-savoring compilation of cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and...BEEF?!
Needless to say, the #2 was an excellent choice for lunch. But I admit that my expectations were greater than reality. It was a welcome change, however.
So I find this second movie theater, ask the attendant there who says she thinks she saw them. I sneak into the movie theater clearly showing it, and walk up unnoticed and watch the final 2 hours of the film (I spotted them and moved next to them halfway through--to their surprise of course).
Needless to say, that was a mind-bending movie much in the same ways The Matrix, or The Truman Show, or supposedly Shutter Island was. I could write a whole entry on this as well but I won't because that's not the crux of the story...it's really more about the trip. I will say though that the movie was the topic of discussion for at least the following two hours (to the pain of my ears, unfortunately). We returned from Cheong-ju to Goesan by dinner time and prepped for our quiz Monday (yesterday).
The trip was well worth my time and energy. I'm glad civilization, media, and burgers do in fact exist in Korea (hyperbole of course; Seoul is one of the top 5 most populated cities in the world).
PS: I read DFW's Consider the Lobster on the hour-long bus ride to Cheong-ju and DFW is a genius. I can't stop reading his prose.
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