Guam

From November17 to 21, I was at Guam, participating in Asia Pacific Mock Trial Competition. It was such an amazing experience.

First of all, the competition was held in an actual courtrooms with actual judges.
Now, this courtroom was one among many courtrooms in which the competition was held, and as you can see, it is all very real. Too real that it made me quite nervous, actually. The person behind me in the picture is the chief clerk, or something like that. He gave us a tour of the whole place. Something that is very interesting about the courtrooms in Guam is that they are really cold. I mean freezing. Now, even though I was fully dressed in suit, I could practically feel the air conditioner freezing my bones.

My teammates

 Another thing that I noticed about these courtrooms were how well equipped they were. The jury box, the witness stand, the attorney seats were all equipped with a touch screen. This touch screen made it possible for everyone to draw circles and underline without actually damaging the exhibits. There was also an elevator to the witness stand for witnesses with disabled legs.
The clerk showed us around the entire facility, and I was mainly surprised by the judge's room. It had an amazing ocean view, and it had an elevator just for the judge herself. The picture on the right shows me and my teammates, Nuri Kim, Sumin Park, Sujin Lee, Hyejoon Lee, Gyu youn Park,and Seohyeon Lee.

Another amazing thing about the competition was the other teams. All teams other than 4 teams from Korea were all native English speakers, and they were awesome. Not only were they fluent, but some teams were exceptional at mocktrial itself. I learned after some games that one of the teams that our team just went against had went to the National Finals Mock Trial, and actually won it at '94.

     More interesting than the competition itself, however, was the food and fun I had on the island. For the first time in my life, I went to a Mexican restaurant. I had a steak, but I also tried some taco from my friend's dish, and it was really good. The crunchiness followed by sweet-warm juice and than the soft meet and vegetables of the taco was amazing. Also, I tried Dr.Pepper for the first time in my life at that restaurant. The color made me wonder whether there was a difference to it and coke. However, after a sip I was sorry that there wasn't Dr.Pepper in Korea. Actually,that is something that I can't understand until now. For dinner, we went to the Chilies, and the food there was even better than Mexican. The thing that I loved the most was the dish with vanilla ice cream on top of a hot fudge brownie. The combination of melting ice cream with warm chocolate bread was eccentric. It totally melted my brain.

Come to think of it, almost every meal that I had at Guam was either good or amazing. On the last supper, we went to a place called "Kings", which is according to our supervisor, a restaurant that only Guam has. At there I had such a fun time.This picture is me playing rock-scissor-paper with senior Seohyeon. The winner would get to sprinkle the loser's drink with pepper. I am proud to say, she probably drank a good deal of pepper that day.


On Sunday, all the competition had ended and we were given free time on the island. This picture is me planning where to go with my friend Moses. Yes, his real name is Moses. Anyhow, that day, we went to the mall, to the beach and the Hilton swimming pool.
Going to the mall wasn't originally my plan, but we ended up going there anyways with the seniors. Even so, I had such a fun time there. We ran through aisles of souvenirs, and picked out presents for our friends and family. I ended up buying a shirt like the one that I am wearing in the picture for my dad, and earings for my sister and my mother. I plan on sending them after I write this article. Hm...what should I write on the letter?

This bus, called the Tumon Shuttle, is the bus that takes us to anywhere for 3dollars a ride. It goes quite slowly, but had a great view and on it, we could see the whole island. This picture under is the picture of me and my friends riding the actual bus.
It was funny how everyone on the bus seemed to be either Japanese or Chinese. We were stuck in the middle of

"Sumimaseng"s and "Nihao"s. Still, there was no windows on the side of the bus, and I could literally feel the breeze on my cheeks.


After three or so hours of shopping, the gang went to the beach. We first dressed in a likely manner, and then met in front of the hotel. It took us 30 second walk from the hotel lobby to get to the beach. There was grass field in front of the beach, and people

were having barbeque there. Such a great smell of sausages sizzling and roasting was all over the field.
Another 10 second walk brought us to the water itself. The water was bluer than the sky. It was transparent,and was almost as if someone had spilt powerade all over the beach. The photo doesn't really show the colour of the water, but trust me. It was the most beautiful beach that I have ever seen. Next hour passed in a frenzy. We splashed each other, played shark, and splashed each other again. We buried each other in the sand, and took shots of each other jumping. It was an unforgettable moment. Below are the pictures.

Building Sand Castle on top of a Senior

Group Jump shot!

Me Flying

It was such an amazing trip,and even though my body was exhausted by the end of the day, my mind and soul is filled with hope,fun, mischief, and all those values that I loved about myself.