| | Translator. God smacked me.
He said, "You're forgetting your Japanese skills. Here, a Japanese boy with no English skills. Speak to him and show him around. Good luck remembering vocabulary."
*flounders around helplessly*
Two days of showing my dad's friend's son around. Even if he's half Japanese, half Filipino, he only knew Japanese and a teeny bit of English, as in enough to say, "Thank you" or "No, it's okay" and other useful phrases while I struggled to put together a sentence in Japanese.
Okay, I recovered from my exhaustion.
It's good that I had to actually use Japanese with a person, considering that my Japanese Placement exam for college will be next Thursday, at 9:30 am...EST. (That's 6:30 am for me, damn.) I had to wake up early -- meaning 10 am, since I switched to vacation mode as soon as work ended -- just to tag Emil around.
I didn't anticipate anyone else to accompany me when I planned to hang out with Jenny on Thursday, or with Carina today. So when a boy with only 3 years of English skills shows up, I panic. Jenny was a good sport about it, since she was more of the leader as we searched for pho to eat and tall men to look at. Rina, as introvert as she is, didn't talk much to Emil at all.
One thing I loved about showing him around was that despite the overall awkwardness, Emil didn't complain. It's probably the whole Japanese attitude of being polite that I've oh-so-diligently studied for the past years, but it was different from the attitude I saw in the Japanese exchange students from junior year. Since he's from the countryside and attends a boarding school, he was pretty quiet and went along with things. Little things like the way he put his chopsticks down on the table and the way he opened his menu fascinated me.
I shouldn't have been so fascinated since I see this stuff a lot, but I don't know...he probably found me to be extremely odd, with my jittery nature and how I was juggling my iPod and cell phone like glass orbs. (Brand new, so I'm still getting used to them.) If there weren't such a language barrier, I probably would have been able to be more open with him, as I usual am with others...
Why I wrote such a long entry on this, I'm not sure.
I just feel a sense of accomplishment that I actually guided someone around San Francisco.
That way, I learned that SF itself is not a very exciting city, but it's home.
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| | Posted 7/25/2008 6:44 PM - 5 views - 0 comments
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