Sunday, September 14, 2008

Have you ever....

Laughed until you cried and couldn't breath?

Sat in a room full of people from all over the world?

Had a taxi driver tell you how to say the street you live on?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I had to smile at the last one- I remember having a taxi driver try to teach us how to say the name of our school when I was China; I had the pronunciation right, but I kept getting the tones wrong. After a few tries, I wished he would just give us a break and let it be, since he knew what we meant anyway. I sure wished I'd paid more attention a week or so later when I got off at the wrong bus stop, ended up lost in a city of 20 million people, and couldn't make any taxi driver understand where I wanted to go. Fun times! :)

nic said...

Yes to that first one. I've even laughed myself to sleep once. For the second question, I used to hang out in Seattle's International District - that's about as close as it gets.

That third one though... well I've never taken a taxi anywhere, so that one is new to me.

Nick Jesch said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Nick Jesch said...

first one, yup.. but it was when we were silly kids. Now we're silly big kids, the laughing stops a bit short of that, most times.
Second, pretty much...at one time, folks from five continents present, no one from Oz/NZed, but several had BEEN there.... and many other parts of the world as well. International missions conference. The funniest was brother John, from India. First time out of his country, we were at a facility halfway up Mount Hood near Portland, Oregon, in February.The second night it snowed.... and watching him seing it for the first time was amazing. In his fifties, he was like a two year old, marvelling at and playing with the stuff. Magical!! His delight in it was, well, delightful. He also had to borrow several jackets and blankets, as he was not used to being in 25 degree air. Third, not exactly, but close. Getting directions to an "address" in Managua Nicaragua is always amusing. They don't use streets and numbers. And some of the "starting points" for directions no longer exist, so one must know where it USED to be.... and memorising the "address' is always a challenge, even writing it down only helps some of the time, as various people give them differently. Best plan was to get somewhere well known in the vicinity, then walk from the known landmark.
On pronunciation, I did have quite the merciless time with a local chap when I was in the Dominican Republic: he was asking me how to pronounce the words in a sentence he'd written down so he could learn it in english (he spoke almost none). Ah stawrtid a tawkin lak Ah wuz frum Tayexiss an he trahd ta tawk lak me... fer a spell. Then he realised I was having him on, we laughed a great deal, and I helped him learn to say it properly. We became fast friends....and laughed a lot more. (he also tutored me in spanish, or at least what passes for such in Barrio Maria Auxiliadora.. but since that's where we were at the time, it was most practical)