Last night I was chatting with a friend about random awkward moments, and an awkward, embarrassing moment from a few years ago popped into my mind. It makes a good story, and it’s fun to laugh at other people’s embarrassing moments, so I thought I’d share it with y’all for a mid-week brighten-up session. 🙂

Back in 2014 I traveled for several months abroad – first a month in Indonesia, then after just eight days back at home I left for a month of road-tripping across Europe. As you can imagine I spent a lot of time with non-English speaking people and therefore sometimes kinda maybe forgot to be extra careful with what I said.

At one point in the trip, I visited Beje, also known as The Hiding Place, with my family. (You can read about my adventures there here and here.) Visiting the Beje was a dream come true, and I enjoyed it immensely. Unfortunately, the people who we were going on the tour with (total strangers to us), were in a hurry and kept trying to speed things up. That, in turn, made the tour guide flustered and she took it out on us by being rude.

When we left the Beje we were all hungry, so we walked to a very crowded marketplace and had fun experiencing the culture as we wandered around looking at the flower booths, and admiring the beauty of old buildings. Next, we ducked under the outdoor awnings to a large maze-like area with lots of different stands selling meat and veggie pies, as well as a variety of other foods. As we stood clustered together in the bustling place eating (and mind you, this was an hour or so and a fair distance away from the Beje), my sister mentioned how it had ruined the tour for her when the guide had been so rude.

I, meanwhile, felt rather sorry for the tour guide because it had been the other Americans on the tour who I felt were the rude ones. So coming to the tour guide’s defense I was like, “It was those other Americans who were rude cause they kept being annoying and rushing the tour guide!”

From right behind me a deep voice said, “Well we had to hurry because we’re on a cruise ship and it only stops here for seven hours and we had more to do today than just tour the Beje.”

I jumped and turned around, horrified to see that the very stranger I was complaining about was standing literally right behind me. Apparently, my sister had seen him and was trying to elbow me to make me quit talking, but it was so crowded where we were I thought she was just being shoved into me. Thankfully we never had to see that person again, and hopefully what I said didn’t bother him too much.

It was a good reminder for me that even when I’m in the middle of a large, crowded, marketplace in a different country, there might still be an English speaker right behind me.

What’s one of your embearassing moments?