Polyglot World

Yesterday, I rode through the rain on my motorbike to buy my tickets for my trip to Jeju. There was another foreigner at the counter who was also buying a ticket for Jeju, but he was trying to do so in heavily French-accented English. The lady behind the counter kept asking him "Hand-eu pone?" which is Konglish for cell phone. I looked over at them and asked him (in French) if he had a cell phone. He shook his head and I told the lady behind the counter "Opsoyo" (Korean for "don't have"). Out of relief (I am sure) and shock (a language other than Korean or English???), everyone broke out into hilarious spontaneous applause. And so it continued with a sort of English-French-Korean-Konglish "conversation" of sorts until it was all sorted out.

This afternoon, I arrived from playing "Red Rover" and "Blob Tag" with my Grade 5 students (Note to self: Korean children HATE holding hands with the opposite gender) to find 2 secretaries, the principal and 2 workmen in my language lab, installing an air conditioner.

Sidenote: WOW. I get an aircon in my classroom! Ummm... not to sound like an ingrate, but you DO realize that today is the last day of school and I won't be back here for over a month??? Okay, uh, just checking. Thanks though! I would have loved having it there for the past few weeks, I can tell you!

So, one of the workmen said something in Korean about "mul" and the 2 secretaries looked confused and the principal left and I said "water?". And everyone seemed surprised that I understood. So, the workman came over to me and said "Habla espanol?" and I was like "un pequito" and he explained something, in Spanish, about needing water to pump through the system or something. And then he asked me where I was from and I realized that I was now having a typical "Korean" conversation, but in Spanish!

So, yeah. I got to brush the rust off my French AND dig waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back for a few words of Spanish, and all in the space of just a few days. Oh, and I got air conditioning in my classroom!!