I left the apartment at the same time as my next door neighbor who I have not yet had the chance to meet. I greeted him in Korean and he responded. Then he continued, I don't know what he said but since he gestured toward my apartment I said, "Nei." I figured he must be asking if I lived there. Nei, nay, nea, however you want to Romanize it pretty much means yes depending on the situation. I like to think of it as a wild card because it can mean just about whatever you want it to. If somebody's talking to you, say nei and they will know you are listening, you can respond to a greeting with nei, or you can use it to speak to a horse as it turns out all horses even those in America use it! So, with my deep understanding of this word, not to be confused with the word of the knights who say nee, helped me to convince the first person I saw today that I could in fact speak and understand Korean. That is until he spoke again and I had to confess I didn't know what he was saying. Our conversation quickly changed to English at that point.
I then started my walk along the busy narrow roads leading to school. I didn't have a chance to eat at home so when I could smell the sweet smells of Paris Baguette I took a short detour.
The cinnamon rolls were fresh out of the oven and with the chill factor outside I really didn't have a choice in that matter. As I ate and continued my walk I kept sniffling my nose which has been runny lately. My frosting touched my nose and stuck in between my nostrils as I continued to sniffle. My tongue is long enough to lick it right up, so what is a guy to do? Anyways I'll just let you guess if I ended up with a sweet and salty surprise or not.I continued past some people loading up a truck with household goods covering the sidewalk. As I squeezed through the furniture a man unknowingly stepped into my path. I politely said excuse me in Korean and he turned and said, "Chue song hamnida" which means I'm sorry.
I reached into my vast Korean vocabulary and responded, "Nei". I love wildcard words. That was number two on the list of people who actually thought I could speak Korean in the first thirty minutes of my day.
As I continued I saw a soccer ball at the bottom of the hill on the way up to the school. There is a field on top of the hill where many students spend their nights playing soccer. They must have not been able to find the ball after it rolled to the bottom of the hill in the dark so I dribbled it up the hill for them. I put it at the top of the hill for easy finding, but far enough away from the field that someone else who wonders onto the soccer field won't take it as an opportunity to get ball free of charge. I'm not completely altruistic in helping them though. It gives me a strange pleasure to think that some time today the group of friends who lost their ball will all end up giving the guy a hard time who swore up and down that he saw the ball roll down the hill and made them spend half the night looking for it.
