Subways and Taxis
Last night Stephanie and I went out after work to meet up with some friends at a jazz club. We rode the subway straight out there and had fun hanging out. One of our friends play drums and sits in on some songs sometimes. It was actually toward ending when we got there, but we sat around chatting for a while. We finally started leaving about 12:15 because the subway stops at 1am. We went on the subway, and had to make a transfer. We were pretty sure they wouldn't actually STOP the subway, but let it run its course to the end of the line.Not true. They made an announcement that it was the last stop and there we were, in a very empty subway station called Gunja. We knew we had to take a taxi home. Stephanie's pretty brilliant and she copied down, in Korean, the name of our home subway stop. Luckily Stephanie writes pretty good Korean- he completely understood and started driving us home.
I told Stephanie that in day to day life, with work, and riding the subway, this doesn't feel extraordinary. But somehow, put me in a taxi, and drive me through town late at night with the lights, over the river and I say to myself, "My word.. I'm in Seoul."
Well, our taxi ended in a pretty funny way. We had JUST had a conversation with Angel at the club about how the 1st second language you learn is what you resort to when you are flustered about speaking to anybody who doesn't know English. Stephanie and I immediately resort to Spanish. Instead of taking us to our subway stop I said "here, here" to him, right in front of our building. He said something, questioningly, in Korean, and I said "aqui!", which means "here" in Spanish. Duh. Stephanie and I couldn't stop laughing and tried to tell him "ne" (yes) in Korean.
oh boy.
posted by Meghan @ 9:22 PM
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