Lindsey writes from Korea:

9/30/2007: Hey there,

Hello everybody!

We are going to the field again today. When we went for the first time yesterday, we were all blown away. Talk about an awesome shooting facility! Puts Chula Vista to shame. Gmail is running like a sleepy snail on downers, and I can't figure out why.

I am still having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that I'm on the other side of the world. It's so easy to summon up the sights and sounds of home in my mind that I find it hard to believe I couldn't hop in a car and be home in the blink of an eye. Still, this place isn't like anything I've ever seen before--and yet it's strangely familiar. Think of the last time you ate at an Asian-themed restaurant. Think of the decorations on the walls. Paintings or silk screens or laquered panels of lush, verdant green hills and mountains, slate-gray ocean vistas, and all of it dissolving into mist and swirling clouds. As fantasic as it may seem, that is a pretty accurate depiction of this place. Granted, we are in the only land-bound province of Korea and there aren't any seascapes around here. But we saw them at dusk as we came in for our final approach, and the vast number of coves, islands, inlets and rivers made this place feel kind of magical, like a watercolor out of a book of ancient Buddhist philosophy.

Of course, this is a city, and it's got penty of the characteristics that make it just as sleek, chic, polluted, and dirty as any other city on this planet. I'm beginning to realize that I should stop comparing every new non-American city I visit to the cities I've seen in Spain, or rural France, or Athens, or Slovakia, etc etc. It's not so much that the city street blocks of Cheongju remind me of those in Madrid--or that the cement-stucco apartment complexes here look similar in size, shape, and amount of aging degredation to those I saw in Bratislava. It's that America is just different from the rest of the world. It's not so much that all these cities look alike, it's that America is just not fitting in with the picture. The image of apartment complexes and city street blocks I have in my mind is that of A and America in general. Highways and feeder roads are the main focal point of our cities, I 혇ㄴ어ㅏㅘㅓㅓㅇ guess. Here they are an afterthought. In America, apartments are like wannabe suburbs with little gated complexes and avenues with trees and picnic areas. Here they mostly look more like the nasty old Goodall Wooten on the Drag in Austin. Only add more spiky TV antennae and a few random Korean flags waving in the wind. I will say that this is one of the few places I've been that really seems to like having their flag around almost as much as we do in America.

I have to get going. Gotta go pack a bag to take to the field. We'll be there from 11-5:30 today (so much for sightseeing... what the hell is wrong with a little culture, people?? I like shooting as much as the next guy but a little balance couldn't hurt...) so we'll be skipping lunch. Yay, Cliff bars and beef jerky! Kevin wants to see if the vendors around the field's parking lot will have anything weird, like fried crickets. I'm betting it'll just be a lot of ramen and shark fin rice dumplings, but to be on the safe side, I'm taking my trusty trail mix a la Mama Carmichael. Nothing like a little bit of home when you're on the road.

Talk to you guys later! :) Lindsey Carmichael, archer
--
To shoot or not to shoot? What a silly question.

~Longhorn Archery~