In January 2002, we had just moved to Russia and I spoke barely any Russian. One day I went to visit a new friend at her apartment. I had the address and the building's front door code, but when I went there and typed it in, it didn't work. Some babushkas came up and yelled at me because they thought I was trying to break into their building (or something - I couldn't understand what they were saying, exactly, but the gist was clear). It was frustrating because I knew I hadn't done anything wrong - it turned out I was at the wrong address - but the situation was too complicated for me to explain with the linguistic skills I had at the time.
Sometime in 2004, I was summoned to the city telephone office in Damascus to explain how we had run up an extensive international bill on our telephone line. I sat in that office and I knew that we did not have international calling on our phone and that therefore the bill couldn't be ours...but I didn't know how to say any of the above in Arabic. Fortunately, Syrian municipal employees in a comfy office/lounge that is well stocked with tea and coffee are more genial than Russian babushkas outside in the snow in January. After some muddling through in Arabic, it was all resolved in our favor with smiles and apologies.
On Saturday, I left the house, kitchen garbage in hand, on my way to meet Jeremy and the kids at the park. For the first time ever in Finland, I accidentally left my keys in the house. This was a problem because to open the garbage cans by our house, you need your housekey. So there I was with a bag of garbage and no way to get back inside the house. No worries, I thought - just this once, I'll walk to the building next door (actually part of our greater complex) and throw it away in their garbage bin, which doesn't require a key. Well, "just this once," a lady saw me and spoke to me very sternly in Finnish about proper garbage disposal according to one's building of residence. I tried - I really tried - to explain that I didn't have my key with me (a grammar construction I had learned just the previous day, woohoo!), and I do think she eventually understood me, but not before she thoroughly shamed me.
And that's the thing about being yelled at in a foreign language - it hurts. In a country where you don't really speak the language well yet, you kind of feel like you're getting yelled at all the time anyway, silently, in your head, sometimes by your own self! You can tell you're not doing things right and that people are rolling their eyes at you. And yet you don't have the language skills to explain yourself, to say "hey, babushki, my friend gave me this address and I'm new to the city but I thought this was the house and maybe the code is wrong but you're kind of making me cry here." Or "hey, we don't even have international calling on our phone, so this bill can't be ours." Or "lady, look, this ONE time I forgot my key and I promise I will never throw my trash away in your bin again."
But instead it comes out like "immediately there be no key on my person though any day there by key thanks sorry I speak only a little Finnish." At least I've got that last part down, because it sure comes in handy. And I'm still shaking off that nasty little cloud of sadness that follows me around after an encounter like this - there's nothing like being in the wrong - sure, I admit it! - but with a dang good explanation I just couldn't wrap my foreign language vocabulary around!
Silver lining, though: my back-and-forth with that lady by the garbage bin was the longest spontaneous, non-classroom conversation in Finnish I've had with an unsympathetic listener, so hooray for progress!