1. 10
    21
    Jun

    Be careful what you wish for… (Pt. 2)

    Alright… I’m kind of over it now so I’m just going to lay out a Coles Notes version of Saturday night.

    Here goes!

    • Muscles has two friends that he has known for about 10 years now. There is his male friend who I will call Mong (they said he looks like MC Mong the pop star), and his female friend who I will call B (because her Korean name starts with that when romanized, and she’s bitchy). I met Mong at the World Cup game last year. He’s hilarious.
    • We went to B’s apartment to meet her husband. Mong was bringing his new girlfriend of one month.
    • I was so nervous. SO nervous. I kept fretting about what to wear. How should I act. What where they like? Would it be okay? Would they like me? Will I understand them? Muscles kept reassuring me his friends were laid-back and not to worry because they really wanted to meet me. 
    • Basically no one spoke English, which I expected and was okay with. What I didn’t expect was that everyone would completely ignore me. B would barely even acknowledge my presence. She kept giving me this weird side cut-eye deal that I didn’t really know how to respond to. 
    • Also, every time Muscles would translate something for me she would laugh and tease him for speaking English. Every. Single. Time. Sooooo… that got old kind of quick.
    • Even though they knew that I could understand basic Korean no one bothered to address me in anyway, with the exception of B’s very sweet husband who asked me a few basic questions in very slow Korean (Where are you from, how long have you been here, etc.), which I answered in equally slow Korean. 
    • We stayed there for a few hours, during which I pretty much sat quietly, listened, and occasionally whispered to Muscles about things so they wouldn’t hear him speaking. 
    • Even though I wasn’t really all that upset, as soon as we left the building tears just came streaming down uncontrollably. 
    • Muscles hailed the craziest taxi driver of life and kept trying to get me to talk about why I was crying while I  texted the girls and tried to get myself together. 

    Now, I would like to explain that yes, I do know that I am in Korea and people speak Korean and that I shouldn’t expect everyone to speak English. That’s not why I was upset (although B acknowledging me or looking me in the eye a few times wouldn’t have hurt).

    I was just so incredibly frustrated at myself for not being able to speak well. I have been here long enough that I should have basic conversational skills at the very least. The whole night I felt like such a jackass because I couldn’t contribute, and there were so many things I wanted to say. How was your honeymoon? Did you enjoy Vegas? Congratulations on your pregnancy! Do you want to a have a boy or a girl? You have a nice apartment! But I just sat there smiling like a tart. I couldn’t stop Muscles every five minutes so that I could have him translate. 

    What’s worse is that as I got more frustrated at being in that situation, I thought about how often this must happen for Muscles, especially at the start of our relationship. I am lucky enough to have friends now that, if they can’t speak any Korean, at least acknowledge his presence and take time to get to know him. I began to realize that I take for granted the fact that he prefers to speak English even though it is probably difficult for him at times. I just began to feel like such a burden. 

    Bottom line: I really do love the guy and I felt like I was failing him and myself. I don’t plan on this relationship ending anytime soon so I need to take some initiative and stop taking things for granted.

    1. karmaplace said: You shouldn’t beat yourself up about not knowing Korean. I think it’s rude and hurtful to ignore someone in a group setting based solely on language barrier. I’ve met people with whom I couldn’t exchange a word, but still attempted to include me.
    2. golden-notebook said: the language barrier is difficult. i totally relate to what you went through. on the other hand it can get really frustrating when koreans don’t know how to behave around foreigners at all.
    3. ablondeinbusan posted this
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A fair-haired femme making waves in the ROK's second largest city.
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