Lost in Translation

I photographed a North Korean woman yesterday and another one again this evening. Very interesting stories...I look forward to getting them translated from the recordings I made with the iPod correctly. My patience, it seems, has been paying off.

I also bought a translating computer today.

I went in to the main huge electronics center in YongSan and asked one of the stores if they had a translation computer. He showed me one that was actually a very small computer, small enough to fit in your hand, and showed me all of the cool stuff. Word processing, internet, wireless, blue-tooth, 6 types of translation dictionaries, Mp3, Mp4, etc... Very very nice unit. I asked him how much it was. He said, 1,300,000...I thought he said 130,000...so I counted it out and handed it to him. He was very polite, re-counted it and said, "You've only given me 130,000 won, you need to give me 1,300,000 won". I said, "Do you have a pen?" and wrote down and told him I thought it was only 130,000. He laughed and wrote down the actual price. I told him I was thoroughly embarassed and apologized up and down.

I told him my buddy had given me $200.00 US to buy a translating computer and asked if he had one that was that price. He laughed and went looking. He found a nice unit, but after seeing the really nice one, this one looked like I was buying a Yugo after test driving a Ferrari. He said the other one was the version the 'rich people' buy. I told him I wasn't that rich, but that when I am, I'll come back and get that one.

We had a good laugh, I apologized over and over again, and I figure he enjoyed the experience, but was probably a bit bummed that he didn't get the comission on a pretty sweet computer.

I'm going to go meet another N. Korean refugee tomorrow morning, then that'll be about it for me to have time to track them down.

No images to upload...the computer I'm on isn't the best for uploading and reviewing images.