Personal narrative
10v3
131136 Alex (조우현)
When I was in my third grade, I, my brother
and mother, went on a trip to England, London, where my cousins were staying. Our
parents’ motive was to take me and my brother to various museums in England so
that we could learn a lot about foreign cultures. Being a third grader at the
time being, I was only excited about going someplace outside Korea, and that I
was going to ride an airplane. We packed our bags for two months of staying,
got to the airport, and finally arrived at our seats on the airplane. After
what seemed like an endless succession of boring clouds for 15 hours or so, I
was flying above London.
After all the procedures to get out of the English
airport, we arrived at our cousin’s place, a beautiful two-floor house beside a
curved road, with a rectangular garden at the back. We settled ourselves at
home for the first two to three days, (I don’t remember too well) For those
couple of days, I goofed around with my cousins while my mom unpacked our burdensome
luggage.
After all that, mom commenced her original
plan; taking us around numerous museums all over England, starting with the
nearest ones from where we lived.
So, every day in the morning, I would grab
a bite of a croissant and walk to the subway stations, with my right hand
tightly holding my mother’s hand, and my left, my brother’s. As days passed by,
and along with it, Museums after museums, I gradually began to figure out
museum manners and knowledge about museums.; I taught myself how to walk
silently, to read maps, usually to find bathrooms, pick up bits of English
words from here and there, sometimes memorized ticket prices, and I also found
out that cafeteria inside the museums usually held unreasonably high prices.
However, these were not the only things that I learned from visiting museums. I
was learning to like museums.
The best example to illustrate this point
would be to talk about our visit to the British Museum. The British Museum,
being one of the largest museums in the world, took three days for us to
complete the tour, when all the other museums only required one day, each. On
the first day, we visited most of the rooms, the galleries, on the first floor
and some rooms on the other floors. The second day and the third day went pretty
much the same. However, after each day, I found myself wanting to go back to
the museum to examine some more about historical crafts and architectures. I
was especially fascinated by the Ancient Egypt, and how the Egyptians had made
things that are hard to make even by using current ‘state-of-art’ technology. When
I went back to the museum, I would look at them over and over again, and
sometimes I would research further information on particular era or craft. I
could actually feel that I was understanding more about them compared to the
time when I did not research.
This three-day-visit to the British Museum
sort of changed my entire attitude in dealing with museums. I would at least
research for a short time before going to another museum or a historical site,
and such visits became more and more exciting.
At the end of two months in England, my
family got on the returning flight to Korea. After the trip, as I lived throughout
my life in Korea, I found out that I could perceive much more than my friends
when looking at some important picture in a history book. To them, it was just
another one of a typical, boring picture. To me? It was something that I had seen
through my own eyes, and at the same time, it reminded me of the joyful trip to
England. Well, maybe this gave me the motive and power to study. Maybe it did
not. However, one thing that I know for sure. is that/ the experience I had in
England was priceless.
