Dear kurlyfryz,

Thanks for the post and for the compliment. I didn't know that I was competing for the Most Entertaining Thing I Do on the Internet award, but I'll take it!

Let's see, the thing I miss most about America. It's not the food, that's for sure. That's going to be the thing I miss most about Korea. I'd have to say that it's the English. I miss being permeated in English. I know it's not the best or easiest language in the world by any means, but it's the easiest language I've ever tried to speak. I miss being able to use slang and idiom. I miss word games. I miss not having to think to read menus. I miss the ease of which it just jumps out of my mouth. I open, and English appears. No translating, piecing together, stumbling, and then finally repeating a moderately correct sentence that only half conveys my meaning.

So far I haven't caught any really good translation stories. It's sad I know. I'm sure they have some about me. One day one of Umma's church friends was over, and I knew they were telling stories about my time at adjusting, but I couldn't tell which classic moment it was. The time he tried to drink tap water? The time he tried to eat such and such with chopsticks when that's obviously a spoon food? That time I had to cut pancakes for him because he couldn't do it with chopsticks? I'm sure she has thousands by now. As far as English, there have been a couple when YongHee translated something literally that made sense but we wouldn't actually say. Today he was going to the ATM, and in Korean the word for 'withdraw' and 'find' are the same, so he said he "needed to find some money."

As far as speaking Korean, I had difficulty trying to explain nerd to people of a culture to whom we stereotypically attribute all the qualities of nerdiness. "Well, they wear glasses, I guess. They do really well in school, but don't have many friends. Hmm, how do you translate 'pocket protector'... They usually like to play Starcraft or other computer games. Crap, this is really hard. They eventually go to college and end up being bosses of major companies..." He totally didn't get it. All the dictionaries said 'stupid,' but that's about as far from right as possible. So we've dropped back to a stance of pointing and saying 'nerd' whenever one is spotted. Hopefully he can build the translation from examples and context clues. Then there was the time that Collin Ferrel came up and I couldn't explain why I didn't like him because there was no translation for the word 'douchebag.' Like I said, I miss slang.