Sometimes the language barrier we face can be a challenge in even the most familiar of situations.

I was just  feeling a bit hungry so I decided to head down to the corner 7-Eleven and pick up something for lunch. I looked through their refrigerated section and found a delicious looking mixed vegitable noodle bowl (noodles, letuice, egg, and a spicy sauce) for only 2000 won. I picked it up along with some multi colored rice balls (tteok) and went over to the register to pay. The girl behind the counter scanned the bowl, looked quizzically at the register as it made a long beeping sound, and looked back at me with an expression I’ve come to know means ‘I have no idea how I’m going to explain this to you…’.  Eventually she gestured at the sell by date on the package: 06/28/09 and said, a bit unsurely, ‘date’. I said ‘date?’ back to her and made Korean index-fingers-in-an-X gesture for ‘no’; she nodded. I tried to gesture that it was perfectly ok with me if she sold me almost expired letuice and noodles, but it seemed lost on her that I’d still want to buy them. Eventually, hungry and tired of trying, I returned the noodles to their origional location on the shelf (which she didn’t seem to have a problem with) and bought some rice triangles instead. They were good I suppose, but damnit… I wanted those expired noodles!