Lost in translation

Today I had a dinner with family and friends. On the way back to our car, one of us decided to buy drinks at convenience store. So the rest of us waited in front of the store. Suddenly an old grandma approached us, trying to ask something. We assumed she was asking about when the bus will arrive, since she was near bus station. Yes, this grandma speaks very little english, so we guessed and assumed a lot while trying to help her. At least she was able to say her destination area and the bus number. We looked to bus timetable nearby and found the next bus should arrive in about 10 minutes. Keep in mind today is public holiday and it was 9.30 PM.

The problem did not stop there. We decided to hang around a little bit until the bus arrived. It never did. Grandma now keep saying 'phone' and showed her coins. What does that mean? We thought she asked for money, so we gave her some more coins but she refused. Okay, phone, she wanted to make a phone call? We lent her our mobile phone, punched the number one by one as she said it. Who were we calling? She said daughter, or something like that, I wasn't sure. Wrong number. It appeared she kinda forgot the number. Next attempt, a slightly different number. Office voice mail, it must be wrong. Third attempt, she wrote the number and gave it to us to dial: no one picked up. Things were getting more desperate.

We understand somehow that she is from korea. So one of us called a korean friend to translate for us. After LONG talk with our korean friend (was she telling a story or what?), we figured out where she wanted to go and which bus she wanted to take. Wait, we know that already! Tell us something more useful! More confusion, laughter, and head scratching happened. Then we got an idea, we asked for her ID card. Of course she did not understand. Pulled out our own ID card. Pointing. 'You'. 'ID card'. Did that work? 'Pension card OK?' she said. Yes!

Fortunately her pension card has an address, and it is not that far. We decided to take her home with our car. Our korean friend said that to her and she was very happy. 'Thank you, thank you' she said while hugging my sister. 'She will attempt to point out direction, left, right, or forward', so our korean friend told us. Right, that will not be necessary grandma, we got GPS in our car! But of course we did not bother to tell her that. Suddenly I got this horrible thought, what if we can't find her home and we got arrested for kidnapping? Well let's just hope nothing like that will happen. A little warning from our korean friend: grandma will invite you in and cook for you once you got her home.

In the car, grandma tried to point out direction. 'Left, left, left' she said. Yes we know grandma, but we have to wait for green light! But she kept saying it anyway, I wonder what could I say back then to make her understand that we understand.

Long story short, GPS worked well and we actually managed to take her home! Yay! Grandma was very happy and invited us to come in her house (but we didn't go in of course). 'Cook' she said. No no no no grandma! We just ate! We kept saying no. Grandma gave us mango, korean instant noodles, and a bottle of coke as thank you gifts. We tried to refuse but she shoved them to our arms anyway. Apparently she live alone, we saw no one else. Well at least we managed to politely refuse her dinner invitation. On our way back to our car, she picked a bunch of flowers and gave it to us. How strong she is! The flower's stem was pretty thick! We said goodbye and finally drove home. We laughed a lot in the car, we still can't believe what happened. Random kindness won't hurt anyone so I guess it is okay.
Once we got home, I put the flower in a vase.
The end.