Return Of The Creepy Neighbor

That’s right – he came back! Two nights ago, I was in my kitchen, skyping with my friend and suddenly I heard “excuse me” from right outside my bedroom window again. Since it was light inside and dark outside, I couldn’t see anything but his creepy silouette and he was right up against my window. As soon as he’d gotten my attention in English, he switched to Korean and began to yell at me. I obviously had no idea what he was saying and he had just scared the crap out of me by showing up there, but I tried to understand what he was telling me.  Obviously I couldn’t, so as he tried to convey one message to me, I tried to convey an “I don’t understand a damn word you’re saying” message back to him. I looked at him with a confused look on my face. I shrugged my shoulders. I stuttered as I answered him. I told him in English, “I don’t understand Korean.” I looked at him apologetically. I asked my friend on skype (while he was still talking) what she thought he might be saying and she looked at me like I was crazy…so then I sent him the same look. He didn’t respond like a normal person to any of my messages. He just kept yelling at me so I decided to switch tactics.

I thought it might be a good idea to pretend that I suddenly understood what he was saying since it worked so well the first time. I pretended to have a moment of clarity and I said “Ohhhhh, okay!” as I nodded my head and smiled. It worked! He went away! I don’t know if he was satisfied or not because, remember, I couldn’t see him. He left though and that was good enough for me. I’m not sure what went through his mind at that particular moment. Did he really think that I went from not understanding a word of Korean to suddenly being able to understand the whole language? Maybe he thought that I’d suddenly turned into a Korean. Or perhaps he realized that I was never going to understand him and that I just wanted him to go away. Who knows?

Anyway, today I told my boss and she sent a coworker to talk to my landlord to talk to my neighbor. Yes, that’s the difficulty that comes with a language barrier. But it worked! I found out that I am, in fact, too loud for my neighbor. This shouldn’t come as a shock to me since my last neighbor wrote an entire letter to the building manager complaining about the noise level of our apartment. Still, I thought I was being much quieter here because I’m by myself… Apparently that’s not the case. There’s a happy ending to this story, though! My neighbor and I now have a deal: I will try to be quieter and he will not knock on my freaking bedroom window at night and yell at me in languages I don’t understand. Yay!