Hey…I don’t speak Korean

Nothing quite drives home the realization that you don’t speak Korean as much as being in a children’s theme park, trying to order lunch.

You can fool yourself a little in sit-down restaurants and train stations.  (Though, let me tell you, going through the Seoul train station experience with Elaina in tow is much more difficult than I remember it being with just Heidi and I.  I think that between her questions and the need to keep her from getting lost in a sea of people, she shaves a good 30 points off your effective IQ.)

You can’t fool yourself when you’re standing in front of a food counter, where people are shouting to be heard over the crowd, where customers are ordering food, and workers are calling out the orders ready to go.  It’s right about then that it dawns on you that…Hey…I don’t speak Korean.  Not even a little bit.  I mean, I know ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’ and a couple other random things, but that’s not ‘speaking Korean’.  Huh. 

And then, you look around, and no one looks like you.  Not even a little bit.  And hey, they all speak Korean.  Well.   You’re the sole inhabitant of this little island of ignorance in the midst of a sea of people effortlessly navigating the treacherous waters known as “ordering lunch”. 

But there’s really no help for it—I’m not likely to learn Korean anytime in the next 10 minutes, and the longer I stand here stunned, as if waiting for the ability to speak Korean to just click into pace, the more ridiculous and pathetic I’m going to look.  So, I point at pictures of dishes (inconveniently, these are high and facing out at the customers, so using them to order is a little awkward).  I use gestures for quantities and to get extra bowls, so I can give Elaina some of my rice and set aside some of her noodles to cool.  I use correct change (fortunately, the prices are written in the same numerals we English speakers use) in the hope that this reinforces the interpretation of what I’m after, or at least limits the magnitude of any misinterpretation.  I smile and hope that this all comes off as more charming than stupid and unprepared.

I buy tickets for the rides, and I really have no choice but to try to do so in English.  I breath a sigh of relief when some high school or college kid speaks enough English to understand me.  When they don’t, we begin the elaborate ritual that is “One adult, one child, one ride”.  This consists of my gesturing at myself (“adult”) and indicating someone of lesser height (“child”) and holding up an index finger, which I fervently hope is universally interpreted as “1”.

Worse is when I have to buy a ticket for the boat ride.  The boat is, in fact, pictured on the “menu” of tickets available, but like the food place, the menu is facing outward from above the head of the ticket guy.  Unlike at the food place, the ticket guy is behind glass, so pointing doesn’t help—he can’t crane his neck out and see what I’m pointing to.  I say “boat” a couple of times, having lost the will, by this point in the day, to come up with a suitable pantomime for “boat”, and a little concerned about the possible misinterpretations of anything I might come up with on the fly for “boat”.  Focusing all my mental energies, I will the ticket guy to understand me, and I say “boat” for the third time, thereby adding the mystical power of three to the mix.  Sure enough, he understands, and pulls out a ticket with a boat on it.  He either says, “This?” in heavily-accented English or the mystical connection that I’ve created allows me to hear it that way.

In the end, everything worked out.  We got from our hotel to Children’s Grand Park.  We ate lunch.  We managed to get tickets for rides.  If we were going to do this very much, though, I think I’d learn some Korean.