Small talk
Today we had a timing mix up. The boy went to the early Tae Kwan Do class and was supposed to wait for me to pick him up an hour later. Instead he hopped in the shuttle bus with his friend. We discovered the error when we arrived at the school, a ten minute walk from home. There was no time to get back to the house, so the teacher called the driver who handed the phone to the boy. We told him to stay on the bus, and we would see him when he got back to the school. This adventure wasted an hour of our day and earned the boy a scolding. Just a year older and we would have told him to get off the bus and wait for us in the lobby of the building, but he's not there yet. Had zanla stayed home while I walked to get him he could have met the bus, but we ad decided to spend a few minutes together. We got that and the some! Ah well.
One good thing came of the hour. His teacher tried to make us feel better whle we waited, so she said something. It was in Korean, so it was something we did not understand. I replied in English, so it was something she did not understand. We both walked away from the conversation with the full understanding that she had said something comforting and that I had accepted the comfort. There was no actual language barrier.
Small talk is meaningless in any language.
One good thing came of the hour. His teacher tried to make us feel better whle we waited, so she said something. It was in Korean, so it was something we did not understand. I replied in English, so it was something she did not understand. We both walked away from the conversation with the full understanding that she had said something comforting and that I had accepted the comfort. There was no actual language barrier.
Small talk is meaningless in any language.