The other day at the beach, a group of friends and I got to talking about the Olympics.
I was the only American present amongst several Canadians and the topic quickly moved away from individuals sports and on to which Games are better. Summer or Winter.
I said Summer, I've been to a Summer Games (the '96 Games in Atlanta) and have almost faithfully watched ever since. However, my Canadian friends unanimously said that the Winter Games are better.
Our disagreement came down to medals - Americans are better at the Summer games and Canadians are better at the Winter Games. (Although America has more medals in the Winter Games than Canada. Sorry, facts are facts.)
This then lead to 'how has Korea done in the Olympics?', and to be honest, none of us knew the answer. But we did know one thing! Koreans are good at Taekwondo and Archery!
After that, the beach conversation on the Olympics ended and our chat moved on to something else, but the conversation followed me.
Wednesday (6/13) as I was getting ready to "take a rest" after my last lesson, Mrs. Jang asked me if I'd like to go outside and watch a demonstration.
An archery demonstration done by local high school students who... are archers and are... well I'm not sure about anything more than that. Information is slow to get passed around here, and even slower to get passed to me. So... some high school students came, shot some arrows and then they let some of our kids shoot at the target too.
I was really impressed!
Not only were the high school students really good, but so were my students! Most of them managed to get their arrows in the target and a few even managed to come close to hitting the bullseye!!
Dang! Korean kids really do excel in all areas!
Oh, but wait! I forgot! Of course they would practice archery at their hagwons. Doesn't everyone?! First we will study history, then math, followed by English before we head outside and fire deadly weapons. It's only natural, right?! @.@/ Maybe not, but it's sooo cool!
I wish I had had an after-school program like that!
It's not the winning that matters, it's the taking part.
As of today, there are 43 days until the opening of the London 2012 Summer Olympics Games.
I have to write this again since Posterous deleted your whole post.You had volleyball, basketball, and track, etc. but they didn't have 'weapons' weapons. You have to admit the shot was a weapon and some of your discus throws . . . .
ReplyDelete^^ hahah thanks for saving it dad!! Nothing wrong with any of the sports I played, archery is just on a different scope. (maybe it's from reading too much Game of Thrones) :-P
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