So, this is just a short bit of humor for all those who have been in foreign country and felt lost in a crowd.
I may not have written this before, but my wife is not a native speaker of English. She is ethnically Korean but is Chinese by birth; think of Mexican-American but replace it with Korean-Chinese. As such, she is fluent in both Korean and Chinese. Occasionally she has her Chinese friends over for a meal or just to visit. Naturally, they converse in Chinese rather than English. However, the other night she invited a very dear Korean friend to join us for a big dinner with some of her Chinese friends and me. I am sort of used to the conversation being predominantly in Chinese and just sit quietly or try to engage someone in English. However, I noticed that our Korean friend was sitting quietly and not talking much. It hit me that she also did not speak Chinese. I was guilty of just lumping her in with our Chinese guests and assuming she spoke Chinese. I felt badly for her and for my assumption, so I quickly engaged her in a very pleasant conversation; first with my very limited Korean vocabulary and then in English, of course. I was rewarded with a big smile and a look of relief at not being the only outsider in the crowd
We are truly living in a multi-cultural world and it may be the other person who is lost in a foreign culture and not always you. You just never know and it speaks to the need for any professional language instructor to try and pick up a few words in every language they can to help someone who may be that lost person.
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