Two girls in puffy, colorful jackets turned to me and in unison said, “HELLO!” in English. “Hi! I like your jackets. They have so many colors.” I answered in Korean. They stared at me from the bus stop bench in silence which is the usual response I get from kids in this exact situation. Maybe all kids have a set script they expect both parties to follow when approaching a foreigner. Or maybe it’s that when I double checked the word I used for “color” much later, it has the meaning of tint OR sexual relations and now I want to die a little. I thought they were finished with…

En route to Korean class, an older woman caught my eye at the subway station. It was in fact my roommate from the second floor. We rode the train to our respective destinations while she asked about my parents’ age (she’s a year younger) and told me about the metro in Japan. “I’m moving back in the summer. Come visit.” She talks to me in a mix of Korean and accidental Japanese so sometimes I just pretend to know what’s going on. (My usual M.O.) In class my teacher told me, “I’m putting pressure on you because I think you can do it. I think you are a fast learner…

There has been more upheaval with my work documents that left me hanging worriedly on tenterhooks all day and I could do nothing but check my email with a growing sense of dread. The day was cold and rainy but I needed a walk to clear my head. Down by the beach I drank peppermint tea and finished notes for Korean class. My intention was to also complete the writing assignment but the mental block of possibly not having a job after a year of effort prevented any more than rewriting vocabulary. In Korea, rainy days are meant for pajeon and rice wine. Next best is Busan’s famous dish 돼지국밥.…

Today marked the second in-class tutoring session with my new teacher. She’s from Seoul, so I won’t be picking up any Busan accent, and speaks a mile a minute. Her class is like a tidal wave of information and I love it. Today she told me, “your intonation is really natural, I’m not trying to flatter you. Even advanced learners struggle with this.” I took a moment to be proud until she continued, “but you have a lot of holes in your vocabulary”. Yes, this too. “How do you know the word for ‘refund’ but not ‘human’?” She has since started to smother me in vocabulary which is the best…

Busan expats are lovely and I joined an English woman on an adventure to the art museum. We spent hours lost in the mirrored lights. A man with his son started a conversation in English with us. “This place is beautiful, isn’t it?” He said with a Korean accent. We agreed and dad tried to get his little puffer vested son to say hello to us in English. “This is Johnny. Johnny, say hi!” Johnny did not say hi and instead hid against his dad’s knees. I love dad leading his son by example: a second language is nothing to fear. The day concluded at the same food court where…

While I was in the US, my roommate House Owner reached out to me to help translate an English brochure for her sister’s drone company. She did the first pass into English and I cleaned up the language and sharpened it into business terms. She had also left a paragraph in Korean she had difficulty translating. It was, in fact, a mess of a paragraph but I had fun decoding it. Her sister’s company paid her for her effort and she promised to reward me with a solid meal when I returned. Last night I cashed that check and requested that she, Freshman, and I go to eat 대창, large…

I spy with my little eye…