We were back at the library this
time around, and Hwa Won wanted to talk about a critical incident that I may
have experienced when I was in Turkey this summer. I was surprised actually at
how well I acclimated to the culture when I was there, however there was one
incident that stands out in my mind.
I told Hwa Won how I was out at
restaurant with a few American friends of mine. We were practicing Turkish
words we knew, which were very limited and pretty harmless. The three of us
were trying to integrate them into our normal speech just for fun.
Then one of my friends made a joke, and
another responded with a Turkish word. This word in particular was taught to us
by one of our mutual guy friends, and just so happened to be a curse word in
Turkish. My friend, forgetting that everyone in the restaurant could understand
this particular word, laughed and said the word in an extremely loud voice.
Everyone at the restaurant stopped speaking for a moment, and the woman sitting
behind her turned towards my friend and stared in disgust. It was beyond
embarrassing.
Hwa Won thought the story was
amusing and informed me of some of the difficulties she went through when she
first arrived in the United States. She said some of the most annoying and difficult
instances were at restaurants. Servers in the United States are very friendly
and want to make sure you are having an enjoyable meal.
In this case, Hwa Won and her husband would be
eating at restaurant and the server would keep coming back to speak to them.
However, their English was very limited at the time and they had trouble
communicating. All they wanted to do was eat without being bothered. In South
Korea, she told me, servers leave you alone except to bring you food. I told
her how I would sometimes prefer that. Some servers do talk too much.
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