Church day

[yaminokaitou]

So today was good and bad. Good because I woke up to a blanket of light snow. The sun was out, there was no wind, and it wasn't even that cold. And then the snow. It had snowed enough to make everything look pretty, but it wasn't heavy enough to impair my walking to the subway station for church. We had our Christmas service today, which was nice.

Comments

[hikari318]

That must have been really frustrating >_>
People don't learn to speak languages in a few days, they could be a little more respectful.
At least in Japan they don't try to force you to speak Japanese. They actually act quite surprised/pleased when you do xD

[yaminokaitou]

Well, I would be more understanding if they tried to help us out or even spoke slower, but a lot of them will talk normal speed and then just get mad at you if you don't understand. In some cases, it's better if you don't know any Korean at all because you can just sit there and take it in without knowing what they're saying rather than getting upset because they're talking too fast for you to understand.

I'm planning on taking classes as soon as possible, but the earliest class I can get in doesn't start till January or February, and unfortunately I didn't have the opportunity to learn in when I was in the US.

[icysbrani]

We're having the same problem at the hotel as well. XD They expected us to understand Korean, which we couldn't...

[yaminokaitou]

Yeah, I was really surprised by that because I thought that Koreans would have the same attitude that Japanese would and be surprised. One time I was trying to ask this one guy if he had seen my flash drive and he totally blew me off and told me to get my "boyfriend" to speak for me since I didn't speak Korean. Totally did not fit the stereotype I was used to. XD

[yaminokaitou]

Forgot to mention: I get that ALL the time at the grocery store too. The lady will speak to me in Korean, asking me things. Luckily, I've learned to understand what she wants from me, even if I don't understand what she's saying.

What are you doing in Korea? Vacationing?

[icysbrani]

To answer your question, actually I didn't go to Korea. We had a group of Korean tourist staying at the hotel in Thai. I was there to visit my friends who worked as a customer service and happened to listen to what they said. They kept speaking in Korean while my friend using English. It was... very confusing because they were like, refused to talk in English, until my friend called the other who could speak Korean to take care of them.

Chinese and Japanese don't have this problem, though. They tried thier best to speak English at least.

[aelvana]

Heh, the problems you never think about... I do find it fun that you can communicate better with her in Japanese than Korean.

[yaminokaitou]

Well, her English isn't very good, and after finding out I study Japanese she's always talking to me in Japanese instead of English. It's fine with me, though sometimes it's hard to hear what she says because she's always trying to talk to me during the music parts before church.