Quiet time

The only drawback to Korea is that everyone seems stubbornly set on speaking Korean. 

Everything is Korean.  Road signs.  Menus.  Books.  Magazines.  Every conversation.  Every shop keeper.  Every restaurant waitress.  Everyone who I have to beg and plead with to purchase a bus ticket, train ticket, or movie ticket.  Even the park ranger yesterday, who said my legs look like those you’d find under a chicken, did so in Korean. 

You name it…it’s Korean. 

It’s like I’m in another country.  Weird.

And I’m OK with it.  It’s fun, really.  My favorite author, Bill Bryson, put it best…

   "But that's the glory of foreign travel, as far as I am 

concerned. I don't want to know what people are talking about. 

I can't think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder 

than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. 

Suddenly you are five years old again. You can't read anything, 

you have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work,

 you can't even reliably cross a street without endangering your life. 

Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses."

                -Bill Bryson, 

                from Neither Here nor There; Travels in Europe.

To one person, this would constitute the most frustrating year of his/her life.  To another, the biggest learning experience ever.  To others still, a life such as this would be a constant roller coaster of up and down events, where this person speaks English and you’re able to secure cream and sugar in your coffee, to that restaurant where you do your best to order chicken but somehow an octopus shows up on your plate.

Jessica and I, on the other hand, never take for granted the moments when Korea-speak is swirling all around us.  It’s our quiet time.  The time when we don’t have to talk.  When we don’t even have to pretend like we’re listening.  That’s what we do all day.  We’re employed for the simple fact that we can speak a certain language.

For Jessica it’s in the evening at yoga class.  It’s her time to be quiet for an hour.  The chatter simply sounds like white noise to her.  She can practice her back-bending, Exorcist-like stretches in peace.  For me, it’s at lunch time.  The cafeteria is full of students, teachers, administrative staff, and the principal.  I don’t have to be social.  I don’t have to talk.  I don’t have to pretend that I’m listening to the principal talk about last night’s episode of the Simpson’s.  Or those pills that lasted for 4 hours.  

He just thinks I'm not listening.