Two More Lovely Moments

You’re sitting in the theater waiting for the Turkish movie to begin and the two Korean guys sitting next to you hear you talking to one of the film festival volunteers in simple Korean and decides to strike up a coversation with you, and it’s actually mostly comprehensible both ways. One guy’s a waiter and the other, the one more into it, is a farmer. They stumbled onto this Turkish movie by chance, knowing nothing of the film festival, and decided to give it a go. They’re amused by the fact a Canadian foreigner doesn’t mind being mistaken for an American, but don’t seem to grasp why foreigners cannot tell Canadians from Americans on sight the way Korean often seem (or claim) to be able to do with Japanese tourists. All in all, it’s a good conversation, all the more satisfying since you used grammar structures you’ve been practicing lately, and because only two English words were used: “short film” and “farmer”. You didn’t even have to look up “cannibal girlfriend” in the dictionary during the bit of the conversation when you were discussing Korean short films at the festival. Talking with a farmer and a waiter in a movie theater reminds you how much language study can open the world up for you… and you decide to work still harder at it, as the movie begins.

…a few hours pass…

You’ve got the strangeness of a movie you just watched still misting up your brain and you’re sitting on a public bus in the rain, the road slick and the windows fogged up and covered outside with droplets so the only way to see where you are is out the front window the bus, and nobody on the bus could answer the question “Where are we?” anyway, and you have Yo La Tengo’s “Tom Courtenay” on repeat in your minidisc player, and you realize you’re almost home…

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