I Love SK

4-27-2010
Day 51 of 365: So you know that I Love Lucy episode where Lucy is trying to thank Ricky's Uncle Alberto in Spanish and ends up calling him a big fat pig? Maybe I'm easily amused, but I like watching movies, such as Lost in Translation and Rush Hour, that poke fun at cultural miscues. Since I previously hadn't had much exposure to other cultures, I found many foreign customs strange and unfamiliar. I used to think that many of these crazy movie scenarios were beyond the realm of possibility, and that it took a somewhat clever writer to come up with the witty dialogue for these comedies. Anyway, I remember watching this particular Lucy re-run as a kid and thinking to myself, "This is dumb. That kind of stuff doesn't happen in real life.". Well I'm confirming today that it does indeed happen. Unfortunately, I was Lucy in this scene.

As you all know, I am taking classes at night in an attempt to learn Korean well enough to communicate with the people here who don't speak English. I've adjusted to the fact that the vast majority of Koreans here are not comfortable enough with their knowledge of English to even admit that they know any, so I've taken the initiative to break through the communications barrier. I don't expect to be fluent in one year, but I would at least like to know enough to have basic conversations with people. To do this, I often try to regurgitate newly learned vocabulary and phrases to friends and co-workers to make the material stick to my brain. Just last week, I had learned how to say "busy" in Korean, so I took the opportunity to comment to a group of co-workers on how "busy" they all were. After showing off what I thought was perfect Hangul (Korean language), one of them turned slowly to me and smiled, saying, "Yes, we are all very stupid.". At first I thought to myself, "Well that's a funny reaction. Maybe it's some kind of weird Korean humor that I don't get.". Then I asked him to tell me what I said. As it turns out, "busy" and "stupid" sound almost exactly alike, aaaand I'm very fortunate that this person was in an understanding mood. I guess I'm not quitting my day job any time soon.

In other news, I went to a 3 day orientation for new foreign English teachers last week. I didn't want to go because, in my short time here, I've already had bad experiences sleeping in places that weren't my bed. Example: Remember the heated floors I mentioned before? (blog entry - 10th Avenue Freeze Out) Imagine sleeping on one all night that was turned up full blast. Result? Sweat. Lots of sweat. Well the "business trip", as my school called it, turned out to be pretty fun. We had many sessions on how to teach the youngsters, and there were many opportunities to meet and trade notes with other English teachers in the area as well. Altogether, there were around 200 English teachers attending the event. Of that number, half were from the US, and the rest were from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland and the UK. Sessions ended in the early evening, so there was plenty of time for everyone to "mingle". "It was like college all over again", as one person put it. For me, I was just happy to be around a group of people where everyone spoke English. It's the "little things" these days...