Pattaya Again

I'm sitting at a mall in Pattaya. I walked around and explored the beach, but its awfully hot and I don't really have anywhere to go so I'm waiting for my friend to finish work. I came with another friend from Bangkok for the first night, but she went back to Bangkok earlier today. I'll stay here for 2 nights, then head back to Chiang Mai on Sunday.

A minute ago, I got a phone call from my Korean teacher. She is coming to Pattaya tomorrow with the Chinese teacher from her school. She asked me if I wanted to speak to the Chinese teacher and I said no, as I didn't want to waste any minutes of the somewhat expensive internet time. So of course she puts the Chinese teacher on the phone for the usual language test. In this case, "Can Brett really speak Chinese?" So I think I passed the test as usual. I really feel like some language monkey sometimes. Admittedly, there are times when I like the attention, but other times I get kind of annoyed when people test my ability to speak their language.

So lets get this straight. I can speak 5 languages at the moment. This by no means implies that I am fluent in them, but I can say with confidence that I speak considerably more than a little. I'd say I'm fluent in Thai, but there are situations that occasionally occur where I don't know the most natural way to say something. And as far as reading and writing go, my Japanese is probably more advanced than my Thai. I realize I am something of a novelty as there tends to be a limited number of white people running around speaking Asian languages. Here in Pattaya, I can't explain how many times I get gawked out by Thais and foreigners alike once they hear me start talking. Most of the trash that live here never bother to get past their bar-girl-Thai.

I've made the fastest progress in Korean (well probably Indonesian, but I don't really count that as I stopped studying after I left Australia). In about 6 months I have a fair base of Korean and can appear fluent to someone who didn't know any better. But then again, I would argue that I am only fluent within the boundaries of what I've learned. I pretty much only speak with my teacher and she knows the limits of my vocabulary. I attribute my progress to my method of learning to a good book, the method I have developed for learning languages and a good flexible teacher willing to put up with my not very conventional ways.

I realize this isn't as coherent as much of what I write, but I've been feeling a little strange lately.