Victory and Defeat! My route to work is uphill both ways. I know, I sound like my grandparents describing their trek to school in 14 feet of snow. But it is true. There is a significant hill between my apartment and my lab. On Monday it was more of a mountain. However, I can walk around it if I go off campus. This adds about twenty minutes to my trip because there just happens to be a Dunkin Donuts there. At my previous job, there was a Dunkin Donuts at the entrance to my parking garage. I think I lasted a day before I caved and became a Dunkin Donuts addict. So much of an addict that when my sister visited me in CT, she actually got tired of Dunkin Donuts (Is that really possible? Or, was she just messing with me?). Anyway, I think it is clear what path I take to work which leads me to my first success speaking Korean.
It has been extremely difficult to get milk in my coffee. It is just not done here. The concept is as foreign as putting peanut butter in your wine. Whenever I ask for milk they either say no or change my order to a cafe au lait. So, I tried my Korean. Ooyou is the Korean word for milk. Chogeum is 'a little'. To make it polite you add a 'yo' to the end of a command or a one word sentence making it 'chogeum-yo'. 'No' is the same way. Ani means no, but you would never just say 'ani'. It is always 'ani-yo'. A few days ago as the lady was making my coffee, I said, "Ooyou, chogeum-yo." She looked at me in a confused face and said, "milk?". Success! I nodded my head and repeated, "Chogeum-yo." Then she asked me, "hot water?" Now, every type of coffee Dunkin Donuts offers you can get hot or cold; so I thought she was asking if I still wanted my coffee hot. I nodded my head. I started getting money out of my wallet and was too slow to prevent her from adding hot water to the milk. It sort of steamed the milk a little but the coffee was so close to what I wanted. It tasted so good. The next day she asked me, "Same?" I had been in Korea for less than a week and was already a Dunkin Donuts' regular with my own special drink!
(A side note - When I was young, my father would try to fix the car on his own. He would get it working and decide to tweak it just a little more. This would invariably screw things up.) So, I guess it was genetics when I replied, "Ani-yo", thinking that I could make nearly perfect actually perfect. This time I added, "not hot." The result was basically warm milk with a shot of coffee. One step forward, one step back. False confidence is a killer.
I know your pain! This is two years late, but I managed to stumble along here. I'm also a Hoosier in Korea struggling along to learn a passable amount of Korean, and the cruelty of false confidence is a reality. Glad I found someone who can relate. Cheers!
ReplyDelete