Quad Day
Yesterday was Quad Day. This is the day when all of the student organizations at UIUC meet out on the Main Quad and try to recruit for their organization and inform people about their mission. There were lots of churches, lots of “nationality/ethnicity X in major Y” clubs (Indians in Business, Black Engineers), and lots of martial arts organizations. Instead of pitting the various churches against each other, I decided to pit the martial arts clubs against each other. (Only philosophically, not physically, unfortunately.)
So I went up to the second or third TKD club I’d seen and asked one of the people at the booth what the difference was between his TKD club and the others. And he seemed a bit flustered (he hadn’t expected to have to defend himself verbally, I suppose) but eventually he stammered out a pretty good response. He said that the other club (with whose members he also practices, to be fair) is more concerned with learning set steps and advancing in belts, whereas their club is more concerned with actual sparring and self-defense. Fair enough.
And then I asked the other guy how TKD was different from other martial arts. And he said that it was Korean (which I already knew, but that doesn’t say anything about the fighting style) and that it was a very external, competition-based martial art (as opposed to a more internal, meditative martial art like Tai Chi), but that meditation was also important and that the other clubs didn’t “know @#%! about mediation.” Noted.
And I found the local NPR/PBS station booth and I found out why I can’t get good reception in my room. And I found an organization that I’d heard about in my GA orientation that teaches you how to use various kinds of software, which is good, because I need to learn FrontPage or DreamWeaver or both for my assistantship. And I got a free pen from some Christian organization and I accidentally wandered into the Greek section but then I ran away and I talked to a girl in Russian and my Russian sucks, for the record. And I looked for the LDS booth but I couldn’t find it – there was a sexual health awareness booth right next to where it was supposed to be, which I thought was pretty funny.
And then I found the LDS booth and I came up and gave the members a hard time about the Church being a cult and still practicing polygamy (they knew I was in the ward, just to clarify), and I saw more missionaries in one bunch than I’ve ever seen outside of the MTC. 3 sets of elders and a set of sister missionaries, too. It’s a rare day in Provo when the missionaries come to a family ward. And we had pamphlets and copies of the Book of Mormon in various languages, but no pencils or candy. I think we should have had pencils or candy.
And that was Quad Day.
4 Comments:
I liked this one. It made me happy. I remember whenever there were more missionaries together for something, then they would congregate together and talk about stuffs. It's a common occurence, much more so then in the MTC. I'm also glad you got a free pen, I live for free pens.
Hurrah! Thanks for blogging.
Hadn't heard you'd become a GA. Congratulations. ;)
I discovered this blog a day or two ago.
It made me late for work.
That makes me happy. Hehe.
Yeah, I'm glad that you've started blogging too. Hooray for Katya! Now you don't seem so far away...
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