I can say without hesitation that last summer was one of my best summers. As you can guess the reason easily from the title of this essay, the 2002 World Cup that was held in Korea had made me all excited, and kept me near the TV, even though the events were taking place right in the middle of final examination season. I have to admit that I am such a soccer fanatic that sometimes I can not stand even missing a single match on TV. School was not on the list of things that I could concentrate on, for sure. Everyday when our team had a match, I got dressed totally in red, went out to the square of Seoul City Hall, and became one of the "red devils" with tons of other people just like me there. The excitement grew as our team advanced into higher steps, and it reached the peak on the day when we had semi-final with the team of Germany. Although the result of that particular match was not so satisfactory, I enjoyed the game itself along with the stimulating atmosphere around me and, surprisingly, I could experienced a sense of pride in my country that is what I had never realized before. As time went by and these events came to an end. I found that I could not easily re-adjust myself to my old routine. If you ever experienced something like this before, you could imagine quite easily how I was fighting with myself to find something that could fill up the emptiness. As I did not work during last summer break, I had plenty of time on my hands (HA HA). I thought I would go crazy, if I did not do anything at that time. So I finally made a decision to take a trip to Europe. I was not after a week that I arrived in Europe, since the traveling plans were made in great haste. My destination was Greece, and I visited couple of islands in the Agean sea. Those islands were really so awesome and spectacular that I was just thrown into ecstasy. Although I was having a fine time I was a bit bothered by other people's attention from time to time. They looked at me, as if I were a monkey. I assumed that many of people there had never seen any people from Far East, but sometimes their attention was just too much for me. One day I was walking along the beach as usual when I suddenly found myself surrounded by a group of people. They did not look like local people, and they sounded very different when I overheard them speaking. I was going to ignore them, but they seemed to want to stop and talk with me. Why not? Anyway, they looked like nice people, and seemed to be very curious about this alien. Finally we started to talk, but there was not a single word I could possibly understand; the only word I could pick up was "Koreano??" After many trials of communication, I figured out that they were from Italy, and they were sure that I am a Korean. As a matter of fact, I was wearing a red T-shirt on that day. What they wanted to do is meet with a Korean, and debate the match between Italy versus Korea down to earth. Why not, again? They brought me to a nice cafe on the beach, and just kept talking to me. Of course, there was no way to know what they meant. We spent more than an hour trying to make ourselves understood. Later they invited me to dinner. We didn't understand each other most of the time, but I realized that they were excited to be with a Korean friend. What happened was I met that group over and over, and we hung out together everyday, Although I was alone I found this much more fun when I was around my family. After a week, when I left the island for Crete, I gave them some souvenirs that I brought from Korea. They were really happy with those small things and promised to invite me to Italy in the future. What a nice thing! Only being a Korean had given me such a good luck to meet with great people. I think I should be thankful for 2002 World Cup for making my summer more joyful.
The writer is a junior student in the Dept. of Information System at DU.