I Gave Myself More Than a Month Before Saying This For Sure
I don’t really care to learn Korean.
This comes as something of a surprise to me. I’ve almost always been interested in studying languages and I’ve had plenty of time here in a nearly perfect immersive environment. Learning even a little would also certainly make my daily life easier. I just don’t really care to.
It’s not that I don’t want to, exactly. I’m certainly not resisting; I’ve picked up a few words here and there. I’m just not actively trying. As a result, I’ve picked up a lot less than I otherwise might have.
I’m still having a lot of trouble distinguishing sounds in spoken Korean. This is the first time I’ve spent any real time dealing with a language with a different alphabet and it shows. I catch myself trying to match sounds I’m hearing to English letters, then matching those to the closest Korean letters. It’s ineffective, at best.
That lack of familiarity may be behind my lack of interest. The language certainly sounds interesting enough, but I don’t hear it and think “I’d like to be able to replicate that sound” the way I’ve done with most others. I thought maybe after hearing it often enough to be familiar with the sound I’d start to be more interested, but so far that hasn’t been the case.
It’s also not that I’ve lost my interest in languages entirely. I’m registered for French in the Fall- a completely unnecessary elective, and I’m already more excited about that than I am about being surrounded by native Korean speakers.
At the very least I’m learning a great deal about how very, very little you need to speak to be able to survive somewhere.
I Wish This Were a Joke…
Ice cream is not an acceptable way to say “sorry for attempting to sexually assault you last night.”
On Saturday night I went out in Cheongju with two friends from Pittsburgh and two Korean friends. One of them, as it turns out, was not much of a friend at all.
Early in the evening me and one of the Koreans got separated from my Pittsburgh friends through a series of misadventures involving our other friend, who got too drunk and needed help.
I’ve known this guy for a month. That’s not a very long time, but I had considered him a friend for that time. I considered him a friend that night, too, right up until he decided to end the evening by trying to sexually assault me.
It didn’t work. I was very lucky. I got away, I left, and I took a taxi back to the school where I live. I followed up by reporting him to everyone I could think of. He followed up by showing up the next day with ice cream trying to apologize and blaming his behavior on alcohol.
Understand this, Korean ‘friend.’ I do not care if you are sorry, because I am not going to forgive you. You tried to hurt me, you scared me, and now I do not trust you. I do not care if you were drunk. In fact that may be worse, because that means everyone you know might be at risk from your behavior when you’re drinking instead of just me.
I do not care if you are sorry because now I have to doubt all of my friends for the rest of my time here.
So that certainly put a damper on my weekend and I’m going to be very, very careful about the people I surround myself with for the rest of this trip. I’m very lucky that I got out of that situation okay and I don’t plan on allowing it to happen again.
Anyway, here’s one more story - a good one - because I really am okay.
Last weekend I was in Seoul with two friends. I was feeling homesick, so we decided to look for some American food. The big choices for American food were KFC and Burger King. I’m not a huge fan of burgers, so KFC it was. We stopped at a tourist information booth to ask for directions, but the woman didn’t speak much English and had trouble understanding us. She wound up calling a friend for help, who could only say “Do you want to go to Kentucky Fried Chicken?” Because she couldn’t speak English she just looked it up on google maps and printed a map for us.
So there we are: lost downtown in this huge city, unable to speak the language well enough to even ask for directions, and asking for help by showing people this map printout directing us to the nearest fast food restaurant.
I have never been more obviously American in my entire life.
Passport Replacement and the Omnipresent Language Barrier
I lost my passport in Seoul last week. By this I mean, of course, that I was stupid enough to be carrying it around with me and probably deserved to have it stolen. I don’t know what I was thinking.
Of course I didn’t notice until I was back in Cheongju and of course you have to apply for replacements in person at the embassy in Seoul. Of course I showed up at the embassy on a Wednesday, the only day of the week the embassy is closed.
Following that, though, the entire experience was pretty painless. The embassy was really efficient (I walked in without an appointment at 9:30AM, had to leave to go get passport application photos taken and was still out the door with all papers signed by 11:30AM) and the clerks were friendlier than I’ve ever encountered in a government office of any kind.
The police station (police report required before any passport can be replaced) was a slightly different story. The clerks were friendly enough, but I had a terrible time trying to get them to understand what I was trying to do. Not that they’re expected to speak English, of course, but we had more trouble with the words ‘lost’ and ‘passport’ than I expected we would at a police station near the largest tourist market in the city.
Things could be worse. At least my wallet and phone were in a different part of my bag.
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