The Day I Realized Learning Korean Was Not Optional

So a few days ago my friend Megan and I had one of those days were everything just sort of went wrong. We had train tickets to go to Seoul and stay overnight but we ended up being the last of 300 people to do the medical check so we missed our train. We were out a couple Won and a little bummed but there was a big peach festival going on just down from the university we are staying at. We went and walked around for a bit, saw some cool musical group that played electric keytars that shot fire from the ends and got a lot of free peach sample, which were delicious! Festivals are a pretty big part of Korean culture so it was fun going to my first one!


The streets were lined with tents like this all selling different peach products.

While we were there we met up with some other TaLK scholars who said they were going downtown. That's where Megan and I were going as well to get a refund for our return train ticket, so we walked with them. On the way, they all decided to go to a Norebong, which is like a Karaoke bar. Don't get me wrong, I love Karaoke and these places sound like tons of fun...except that people go more for the bar part and less for the singing. Long story short my friend decided she wanted to go for a while before we went to the train station, but by that time we had lost them and only knew which street they turned on. I couldn't just split from her because it was like 8:30 pm and for those of you who know me, I'm not the best with directions.
 So we found the street they turned on. We start looking at all the buildings looking for the one that says Norebong but they are all written in Hangul characters, not letters, which we don't know how to read. Finally we went into a store and I said Norebong while shrugging my shoulders. The man pointed out the window to the building we had just been staring at for a few minutes. I swear those huge neon music notes had not been there before! We both felt pretty dumb. So the first thing we learned about Norebongs is that they are all on the top floor of each building. We climbed five floors and walked in. I don't think either of us had thought of what we were going to say to try to find our group, because when the woman started talking to us in Korean we both looked at eachother like, oh crap. I asked if she spoke english, she didn't , so our conversation went something like this:

Kamille: We are looking(point to eyes) for Americans
Megan: Like us(pointing to both of us)
Lady: blank stare
Kamille(pointing down the hall) Americans singing?
Lady: Ah! Yeah!
We follow her down a hall full of doors. Second thing we learned about Norebongs: It is not a big open Karaoke room, they are individual rooms that your group books, hence all the doors. She opened one to an empty room, turned on the TV and handed me the microphone.
Kamille: No, no sorry. I don't want to sing. Looking for Americans(doing all sorts of weird gestures)
Megan: 10 americans(holding up her fingers)
Lady: blank stare
I hand her the microphone and give her a very sincere look of apology before saying thank you(one of the 2 phrases I know) and leaving.

To make a very long story short we repeated this process at three other Norebongs before I finally said I was not climbing up to another one only to make someone else feel bad for not being able to understand us. I felt so dumb and I think for the first time I realized that this is a pretty serious problem I've got here. At least when I got to Peru I had a pretty good idea of how to speak and understand spanish thanks to my mom, but Korean is completly and totally foreign to me! Oh and just to make the night even better, by the time we decided to stop looking for them we tried to get back to the train station and got lost and then barely got there before the window closed. Also, even though it was late and dark, it was like 95 degrees outside and so humid. I should have taken a picture of us when we got back...it was pretty gross.
So some good that came from a not so great day: I got some really great exercise climbing stairs all night and I resolved when I got home to start learning this language. So far I've got the vowels down and I'm working on the consanants. It's tough, but I am determined to learn it because I am not going to live here for a year trying to communicate like that! Sorry for the long post, always feel free to skip over the boring parts!