'Take me that way'

On Saturday we set out on our first big shopping trip. We planned to meet with Alan and Jen Friesen, a couple from Regina who are living here with their two kids. We’d met them through Dave’s ESL Café and it turns out Alan and I played soccer together when were seven years old in Lethbridge. If that doesn’t blow your mind, give your head a shake.

So Carmen, Cate and I hopped in a taxi and had a short ride to E-Mart – it cost 1800 won, or less than two dollars. We did our shopping; picked up more groceries and some necessary domestic items and packed up for the short, easy cab ride back home. But, you see, people speak Korean here and we don’t, so nothing is easy. I opened the cab door and said to the driver, ‘Yong San Dong’, which is the area we live in (there’s no street names in Korea), followed by ‘Gi Ha Do’, which means ‘under the bridge’. The bridge is close to our villa and it’s an easy reference point for the driver to take us to. The problem was the Korean driver didn’t understand any of the Korean words I was saying. Alan, who’s been living here since August and knows a bit more of the language, tried to communicate with the driver and they eventually seemed to come to an understanding, so we got in. Big mistake.

She (yes, the first female taxi driver I’ve ever seen) headed towards our area but when she got to the main street, she turned the wrong way and brought us to a completely different neighborhood. Speaking broken or slow English doesn’t seem to help when a person doesn’t know any English, and my directional pointing from the back seat was also apparently in English, because it wasn’t steering her in the right direction. She stopped to talk to three young, well-dressed gentlemen and ask for help. After discussing and arguing for about five minutes about where these stupid white people in the back seat wanted to go, one of them came up to our window and politely asked, ‘Where would you like to go?’. Say what? ‘You speak English’, we asked. We gave him our area and he sent the right direction. 5500 won later we finally got home, and I was scolded by the driver about giving proper directions next time. I think.