The Universiade, a name that combines the words university and Olympiad, is a worldwide sports festival for amateur athletes from 174 nations. Through the competition during the Universiade, several world records were made and Daegu became hotter with excitement.
As the city is famous for its heated summers, many who took part in the Universiade recall the event as "boiling hot." Despite the discomforts originating from the weather, however, there were several Ewha students who devoted their entire summer vacations to the event. Shin A-ram (Fiber Arts, 2) and Sung Je-young (Fiber Arts, 2), went to Daegu this summer to participate in the Universiade by volunteering as translators.
Before they were named as official volunteers, they had to take part in an intense preparation program in advance. This alone would have been enough to scare most people away; however, Shin had her own reasons for wanting to participate. "I had really wanted to help out during the World Cup last year, but I wasn"t able to. This seemed like a good chance to make up for that."
Shin was assigned to an internet cafe. "The volunteers in the cafe would greet the customers in their own languages and help them out in any way we could," Shin said. In return, the visitors would offer Shin their national badges or coins. Shin says, "The most valuable thing I got out of this experience is that I made a lot of friends from different countries."
Though Shin enjoyed her experience, the program did not run as smoothly as planned. There were a few problems with the distribution of the work force. An English translator was assigned to an office of a country that did not use English. "However, I think these problems are simply the result of inexperience; with more practice, we will soon be able to do much better," says Shin.
hjjewel@ewha.ac.kr