Battle of the Accents

Tuesday, March 9, 2010



Okay, second post of the day. So I decided to do this one separately, because it would be longer. So Alison and I made a deal today, and my end of the deal was to get a facebook. I never ever wanted a facebook (as all my friends know), but had started thinking about it when I moved to New Zealand for a while. So she showed me how (and I have to admit she was very patient with me). So far I really don't like it. There are too many buttons to push and it looks cluttered to me with all the postings and people's changes or whatever. I don't know how much I will be using it, but I got it (much to the amazement of all of my friends...and they let me know it). I do have to admit that it is convenient to get any posts right to my email instead of having to look on the website. Although it has been difficult to get a picture posted on my profile. I have already made several mistakes as I tried to comment on one friend and somehow commented on another. This made for lots of confusion. We will see how this turns out.



Anyway, I was in The Gardens for a while, and then walked home after buying a couple of things from the store. Unfortunately they were VERY heavy and I got to waddle all the way home. Nothing unusual for me. I am sure all the people in this city are saying to each other, "Oh, there goes that crazy American girl with all the groceries again." You would think I would have major muscles in my arms.



So after my walk and putting everything away, my Korean flatmate told me several of her friends were coming over to have a party (dinner that she made). These were people in her classes who are studying English. She introduced me to all of them: four Koreans (not including my flatmate), two Colombians, and one Swiss. It was the battle of the accents as we were all conversing. There are some pronunciation differences and all of us would laugh at one time or another (pretty much nonstop) as we would look at each other in confusion.


I seemed to be the prize as everyone would ask me how to say this or how would my facial expression look if I would have this feeling...It was pretty hilarious, I guess being a native born English speaker helped them somewhat. They all said I was a good teacher, but I really didn't feel like I did anything. Some of the Koreans would ask me something, and I would just stare at them blankly, because they would say some in English some in Korean or their accent was so thick, they didn't pronounce things correctly. So I would look at them with a blank look on my face and they would laugh and chatter to each other in Korean.


One of the Korean guys would take pity on me sometimes and try to translate what they were saying. Actually he translated a lot of inside jokes or statements about class, since I was the only one who wasn't in their class. The Swiss guy was so sarcastic and would try to tease us all the time, so you never knew if he was telling the truth or not. I was excited when I hear the Colombian couple say something to each other, because it was something I could understand!!! Even though it was in Spanish (a language I should know well, but don't).



So I don't know how to describe the food. There were miniature hotdoglike sausages, vegetarian pot stickers, salad with long pieces of lettuce, cucumber, yogurt garlic ranch type dressing, cheese, and cream of corn, and we had cheetolike stuff that kind of tasted like fish. We later had some kind of noodles. For dessert, we had ice cream with chocolate fishes. I told her we should offer this to our other flatmate.

So we talked and laughed until around 10:30 when they left. I went to help my flatmate clean up, but she literally grabbed my arm and shooed me away refusing me to let me help her. She is so sweet. I also found out that she is leaving the flat to live in Australia. It makes me so sad, because she is the flatmate I have been the closest to.

So get ready for the next posting!