CREO - PIENSO

After two weeks in Korea, I can handle yes and no; nod my head up and down, and side to side. Staying with my niece and her family, I stick pretty close to them. If I ventured out by myself I’m sure, I could get myself seriously lost and probably in trouble in a hurry. In 2005, in Patagonia I was alone all the time but had Español survival skills, could read some signs, recognized familiar culture. Here, I’m really out of my element. So when something strikes a familiar chord you pay attention and if you’re lucky, enjoy something cool that you hadn’t expected.

Yesterday we were in Osan again, by the Air Base. Outside the main gate of any overseas, U.S. military base is a dense, tightly organized neighborhood where shops, business and restaurants cater to Americans. Osan is no different. A narrow street winds down through 2 and 3 story buildings with something for sale to fit anybody’s need. Then tiny alleys branch off the the side, expanding into a network of even tighter alleyways, like a spider’s web. Just how far you can go down into that maze, I don’t know yet but it is on my (Korean) bucket list. Sungho (Mr. Nephew) had some business to take care of in a real estate office. Terry and I waited patiently while other people were paying rent or inquiring, keeping both of the employees busy. Several people were waiting in line. 

There is an unexpected reward here I hadn’t anticipated. Terry is fluent in Spanish. My Spanish is weak at best but I can make myself understood in most cases and if you speak slowly, repeat often, I can understand, sometimes. So here we are, Korean the obvious challenge but I’m taking advantage of the opportunity to work on my Spanish. In the real estate office, Sungho is engaged with the manager in Korean. I noticed his assistant who looks to me to be, maybe, an Anglo. I said to Terry, “Creo ella es un Gringa.” Then I thought about the verb I had just used and wondered if I should have used Pienso instead of Creo. The difference being, I think, and I believe. I asked her which was best and she came back in Spanish, “Either one is o.k.” After a short pause, the woman sitting next to us, working on her smart phone turned to us with a puzzled loook on her face. She was an Air Force staff sergeant who had just finished with the Gringa lady. She said, “Were you just speaking Spanish?” I admitted that we were. Terry ask if she spoke as well and she nodded. “I thought I was crazy for a minute.” she said. “So many languages going on around you and you lose track of what’s in you head.” Kia Mendez is an administrative assistant to her squadron commander. After college in Puerto Rico, she enlisted and has been in the Air Force for 5 years. When she enlisted, she didn’t speak any English. The only word she knew was, “Attention.” Beyond that, she just said, “Yes Sir” and “No Sir” and did like the people around her. When the drill sergeants talked down to her it didn’t bother her since she didn’t know what they said. She would look straight ahead and say either, “Yes Sir” or “No Sir”, which ever seemed right. Kia, Terry and I talked for a long time and it was just, such a neat, unexpected encounter. I didn’t leave the house with a plan, to meet a total stranger and explore a new personality. Life is an experience, a string of encounters and the meaning you discover there. If it’s all about the decisions you make, then it’s also about the decisions you do not make, and it’s about life’s merry go round, and who sits down beside you.