Hosun Lee/ Chapter3, 1st draft

A typhoon in my life

 

Last summer, when typhoon Bolaven slammed the southern and western parts of South Korea, it came to Korea like a typhoon. But it was not a typhoon itself, because it couldn't hinder the typhoon from delaying its landing on Korea. At first I saw it, it was looking around tightening its vigilance to strange environments. Also, it kept its blue eyes blinking with curiosity to the new world. Though it looked frightened, I approached to it carefully before it ran away.

 

Contrary to my description, it, actually he, is not an animal or something. His name is Ketryk Wilder. He was the first exchange student from the university of New Haven, America to my university, Korea National Police University, and I was supposed to be his roommate for a semester. So I had to pick him up in the airport and take him to my house.

 

At first, I was concerning about whether he could get used to a new lifestyle which is totally different from America's. Even worse, because my university is based on military academy, it has so many rules to observe such as saluting to seniors, wearing uniform, cleaning one's room, morning roll call everyday, confinement during weekdays, morning roll call everyday, etc. I thought that he might have many difficulties in adapting to new environments. Also, student advisors were worried about that too, so they told him that if it was hard for him to adapt in this university, they could treat him as an exception. But his answer was "No, then there is no why I came here. I want to be treated as a normal student of this university." with a determined attitude contrary to my first impression of him. But I screamed in my mind because I would be to blame about all the faults he would made. Oh, Gee...

Actually students of my university have to undergo discipline before entrance, but without that, things were not that very easy. I had to explain all the rules to him in English, because there was no rule book in English. But rather than asking why about the rules, he was concentrating on memorizing rules. But memorizing things and getting accustomed to them was totally different. He was warned by chewing gums during roll call and even got a discipline because of his being late for class.

 

But after that, he got used to my university very quickly. Sometimes, he woke me up for the morning roll call. Then one day, I was curious about why he came to Korea and why he was enduring all the hardships to get used to my university. So I asked him.

"Why did you come to Korea? Wouldn't it be better to stay in your country?"

And he answered with the determined attitude he showed me before.

"I wanted to challenge new things. How can I have these precious experiences in my entire life? When a professor suggested me to be an exchange student in Korea, I accepted his suggestion on the spot."

His answer cast so many questions to my life. When I was a freshman, I had many troubles in adapting to my university like he did. But after getting used to this lifestyle, I was devoted to "given things" that I had to do without challenging new things. I studied hard, actively participated school activities, and faithfully did my chores assigned to me such as cleaning room, ironing my uniforms or something. But I never challenged new things outside of campus. To realize that, I looked like a big frog in a small pond satisfied with "given things".

 

Anyway I helped him a lot challenge new things. We had a trip to Jeju island, successfully demonstrated self-defense martial art in hapkido competition, sang a song in school festival, went to club(cause he wanted) etc. I can't write down all the things here. But there is one thing I'm sure that I challenged new things, being a roommate with challenging guy. And this is my turn to be a challenging man. So I decided to go abroad as an exchange student to his university this year, and that's why I'm here and taking English courses in HUFS.

 

It left Korea 21th, December. It was strong enough to shake my attitude to life violently. As a strong typhoon moves fast, the typhoon named Ketryk has gone now. But one challenging typhoon started from Korea is forecasted to land on America this year.