The random things I say...

cause people to laugh at me and I don't know why. In Vanuatu it was my clever way of explaining to my village that I needed to leave church early because the manioc laplap I ate the night before has given me gas and I was too embarrassed to pass it on a wooden pew in an echoey church. Hey, I did not know that there was a word in Bislama for flatulation. I looked all the possibilities up in the dictionary and found none so I went back to my training; in the anatomy lesson I learned that everything has an ass and it means the bottom or backside of something. So I simply told my village that I had to leave church early because my ass was singing out ["Mi aot long joij from se as blong me i wantem sing aot bigwan."].

Here it is a bit different. My new Korean girlfriend laughs at the strangest things I say. On our second date she drove me home and paid the toll to get from Seoul to the city where I am which is south of Seoul. As she was paying for the toll I noticed at the toll booth that they had a T-Money RFID payment pad. So upon noticing this I pulled out my prepaid transportation card and say, "Oh, T-money! Can I use this to pay for the toll?" After she paid the bill at the toll both she burst into laughter, and kept laughing all the way to my house occasionally asking me to say it again... "T-money." Now she just grunts and says, "Your so cute! Say T-money again."

Yesterday, on our third date we went for a walk around my dong, and I was explaining to her that I wanted to go a certain way because earlier in the week I noticed that a business shut down and they were doing some renovations on the store front and I wanted to see what the new business was going to be. She did not understand my fascination with the speed in which one business can shut down and another open; so I told her the story about TwoTwo's Chicken. That store used to be a shoe repair shop. My co-worker spotted a pair of shoes he really wanted from there on a Monday and on Thursday it was transformed into TwoTwo's Chicken. He walked in scratching his head and asked if they had a pair of shoes he could buy and the people working there said, "Yes. Chicken? Beer?" The shoes were gone forever. To this my new Korean girlfriend laughed and said, "T-money and TwoTwo's. Ughhh.... You are so cute!" And then proceeded to laugh at me.

As she departed she gave me a hug and kiss on the cheek. I put her in her car and she asked me to call her so she could show me that my number comes up on her phone as "T-money." I don't get it, but I can take comfort in the fact that if the locals are laughing at me I must be doing something right.