Communication Breakdown

I finish making my practice meal at an empty table, except for Moon, who is sitting to the right of me. “You’re steak, it’s good, but it tastes too much like…cow” he says between bites. I nodded, but internally puzzled, I try to work out what this could mean. Since working at Nara, I have been able to pick up on Moon’s Moon-isms, but this one I can’t quite get. He tells me everything else is good and to clean the grill and go back into kitchen. Once into the kitchen, Matthew walks up to me and asks how it went. I tell him I’m not sure, grab my dirty dish, and bring it to the dish pit.

Tastes too much like cow? What does that mean? Was it too raw? No, it was almost well done. These thoughts won’t stop coming while washing my tools in the sink. Moon walks around the corner and smiles at me. “You’re doing a good job; you will be ready to cook real tables soon.” He says and walks back to the office to finish paperwork. I’m relieved he thinks I’m getting better, but it is so hard to judge sometimes. One minute he can look so stern and angry, and the next he’ll be singing some pop song he heard on Z104. He is so hard to read; it must be the culture difference. The frustrating thing is, if things went a little differently I would have stayed in Korea, and it would have been my culture.