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Picture – Janice shooting during practice. |
Wednesday, October 3 |
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Let me begin this journal entry by apologizing to Charlene, Melinda, Shelah and John for not replying to their email questions. I have not been able to send messages since I got here. I can receive them, but replies aren’t working. I really want to respond to you, so in the future, try my delta College address at junitt508@students.deltacollege.edu. I will try to answer some of the questions you had as part of my journal.
Last evening we had a short team meeting before dinner. The team was divided up into two groups and we were given the time frame for our practice the next day. My group was to shoot in the morning. We met for breakfast at 6:45 AM and then took the shuttle to the archery field so we could begin practice at 9:00. Before going to breakfast, at 6:00 my time, 2:00 PM your time, I called the JAWS/reading class at Delta College. It was so nice to hear their voices and talk to them about my trip.
The weather has been perfect for shooting. It’s in the low 70’s and cloudy. We haven’t had any rain yet. Today I shot along side all the VI archers who are here at the competition. There are four men and 2 women shooters all together. The archers are from Britain, Belgium, France, Italy and the U.S. Britain brought two, but the rest of us have just one representative. I found out today that this is not an exhibition event for VI archery, but a fully sanctioned world event. That is great news. I was also told that the VI archers will all be shooting in the same category. There will be no distinction made between male and female. The competition should be very exciting.
There is a rule for VI archers that states that the archer must where blindfolds, but the rule is very vague. Most of the archers are using sleep shades. I use wrap-around sun glasses with electrical tape on the inside of the lenses to block out any light. I have sleep shades with me just in case the officials won’t accept my blackout glasses. The Belgian coach wants to bring up the subject in the team captain’s meeting tonight. He spoke to one of the judges at the field who said he would accept my style of blackouts. When we ran into Ann Webb, the IPC archery technical committee chairperson, after lunch, she said she would try them on at equipment inspection tomorrow and, if she can’t see anything through them, she will accept them. We’ll see what happens next.
After a good practice, Courtney and I came back to the hotel for lunch. Courtney wanted some good old American food, so we had pizza which they called “string crust” pizza. The crust had cheese in the center. It was really good actually.
We went back to the field after lunch to get Courtney’s jacket. The college students assisting us all catching the shuttles are very nice. One girl in particular helped us unravel the mystery of Korean Red Ginsin Tonic. We had seen it in one of the shop windows and were wondering what it is. She went with us to the shop and translated the shopkeeper’s conversation for us. The shopkeeper mixed a little of the tonic in some warm water a Dixie cup and let us taste it. It’s supposed to be very good for the body, especially the liver. It was very interesting and felt very soothing going down. Then we asked our new friend where we could find some chocolates and she took us to the deli. We said good bye and she told us to find her tomorrow and she would have some Korea jelly for us. Can’t wait!
I must tell you about our money fiasco. Last evening we wanted to get an ice cream, so we had to get some Korean money. We went to the ATM machine and put in our card. It asked us how much we wanted. We asked for 50, meaning that we wanted $50 worth of Korean won. The machine spit out 50, 10,000 won bills. We were shocked. This seemed like much too much money. We went to the front desk and asked them what we had done. The gentleman told us that we had gotten around 500 U.S. dollars. We asked him how this happened. Well, apparently the ATM had asked how many 10,000 denomination bills we wanted, not how much money we wanted. So we asked for 50 bills and should have asked for 5 in stead. I asked him if this happens very often. He said he had never been asked about this before. Now we have to go to the bank to get it exchanged back into U.S. money. This will be very interesting as we were told by both the gentleman at the front desk and the nice girl at the shuttle that they would not speak English at the banks. She said she would try to help us out. What a mess!
Tomorrow is an official practice day. We will keep the same schedule as today, but the whole team is to wear navy blue pants, white U.S.A. shirts and our navy U.S.A. hat. Opening ceremony is tomorrow evening. Let the games begin!
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