s.k.i. #2

i am tempted to start a new heading for the strange and stupid things i as an american do in korea. i imagine that somewhere in this great little country there is someone blogging about d.a.i. or dumb american incidents. i am afraid the list may be long and i know i have a place on it permanently and for various offenses. but, because i get to record these strange korean incidents, i am choosing to keep my heading of s.k.i.'s and move on. where was i and how many cups of coffee have i had today??

i need to first ask if this type of thing has ever happened to you while travelling in a foreign country where in spite of everyone telling you that everyone speaks english, in reality they dont. and why should they? i have managed to live the majority of my life in the states and have never bothered to pick up any other languages mainly because i believed the lie that everyone everywhere speaks it and a career in international business and more challenging courses in college were just not that appealing. okay, so the question...(how many cups??) have you ever found yourself acting like rather than a simple language barrier is preventing you from communicating your request, it is instead a hearing issue? or a mildly retarded one? let me splain...

i have discovered that when speaking with the locals (koreans if you just tuned in), i speak loudly, slowly and with as few words as possible. i must look and sound like an idiot. thank goodness i have discovered (albeit 5 weeks late) how moronic i appear and can now make a concentrated effort to appear less deaf, less retarded and less like im struggling to speak my own language. however, this epiphany arrived 5 weeks too late and at least one incident will spend the next 50 years keeping me humble and thoroughly embarrassed.

i have become a fixture downtown at the shops, finally learning to navigate my way through dirty alleys, i mean streets and i can now say that i have my top 5 shops to find the bag or purse of your choice. i had the great fortune of meeting the worlds most apt shopper within a week of my arrival and she has graciously whisked me under her jimmy choo wing and we have taken flight. its been more than fun, its been a true apprenticeship in finding the right places and the right prices. on one of my solo excursions, i got a little turned around (easy to do with every store front and alley looking almost the exact same...and lets be honest, there are no big, tall or blond koreans that ive met and well, i have gotten a bit confused more than once as to which shopkeepers ive met but at the risk of sounding like a horrible person, ill stop there). a little disoriented, i wandered into a particular store and found the pleasant owner. here is how i managed to crash and burn and then burn again... the conversation went like this:


kt: (speaking clearly, slowly and with an unnaturally high volume) hi, you have big (must gesture intended size) brown (pointing to closest brown purse) purse (holding up mine for her to see) for me (pointing back to my ridiculously stupid self)?

shopkeeper mentally thinking of all the koreans she will tell about this total dumbarse: oh, you want a large chocolate coach purse? do you want the messenger bag or the diaper one?

kt: (stunned, as this is the first korean i have met that spoke FLUENT english) thatd be great! thank you so much!! (completely over enthusiastic...those of you who know me can completely imagine) okay, thanks again! (should have left store embarrassed, but smarter than when i arrived, but no, stunned katie must say just one more stupid thing). so, where are you from?

KOREAN shopkeeper: here, but i lived in sacramento for a few years. (silently thinking you have now been elevated to dumbest person status over just dumbest american status).

kt: okay, have a great day!


you know how when you completely blow it, you try and think of all the ways it could have been worse? i cannot for the life of me think of one unless of course she had a security camera in the store with volume. that would be worse. although i would at least be locally famous after it circulated its way through every korean tv channel and email. yes, that would definitely worse.