Perspective

It's been awhile since I've been in the same place as a legitimate snow storm, but I think this one qualifies. It's been snowing now for more than twelve hours, and I hear it's not supposed to stop until tonight around ten. We're already knee-deep in snow (literally) -- how much more are we going to get? At least they finally closed the mall. Now I can spend today writing my logic paper and starting on my sophomore essay.

The real reason I wanted to write today was because of something that popped into my mind while I was perusing my logic book, trying to come up with a topic for this paper. I'm not sure why this wiggled its way into my consciousness, but I remembered one particular instance that happened when I was still a greenie in Anyang. At this point in my mission, talking to anyone took an enormous amount of courage, and my poor trainer was probably at her wits' end trying to get me to do it. We were out on the streets not too far from our apartment, in an area that was fairly busy with foot traffic. It must have been sometime in my second transfer, I think, because I was talking to people on my own. I approached an older woman, maybe in her late 50s or early 60s, and 인사'd to her -- in other words, I bowed and asked her 좋은 하루 보내세요?, something along the lines of, "Are you having a good day?"  The woman looked at me kinda funny and said the Korean equivalent of, "What?", so I tried again. 좋은 하루 보내세요? No luck. Once more, a little more clearly and slowly: 좋은 하루 보내세요? She waved her husband over, made him listen, too: 좋은 하루 보내세요? "I can't understand even one word she's saying, what's she trying to say?" she asked her husband. My face burned with shame and embarrassment.

It's funny, but I don't remember how this encounter ended. I think I gave up after a point, just bowed and said, 안녕히 가세요, Good-bye, have a good day, and retreated.

This was really a unique experience on my mission. Even when I was very young and still learning Korean (young in the missionary sense, I mean), I didn't have too much trouble making myself understood, at least so far as my accent was concerned. I have a good accent, I know I do. People (Korean people) have told me that I sound like a native speaker at times, and at all the other times, I'm certainly understandable. I think this case was a function of 1) my saying something that's not really a common way of greeting someone in Korea, 2) her surprise at being addressed by a foreigner, in Korean no less, and 3) her not knowing what to expect from me. There are so many reasons communication breaks down, but I think these three are pretty universal, even if you're speaking the same language. It's funny, too, how dismayed and depressed I was about this experience while I was living it, but now, two years later -- has it really been two years? -- I look back and laugh.