Spending this past year in Romania with the Peace Corps has
helped me learn a lot about myself. I’ve learned to be more independent but it
has also taught me to ask for help when I need it. What I didn’t expect Peace
Corps to teach me was kind of an understanding for people back home. Lets use
my brother as an example.
For those of you that haven’t spent 30 seconds with me, let
me tell you, I’m pretty outgoing and social. I love to talk and to meet people
and socialize. I have had a view of my brother as being a sort of opposite to
this. He rarely had friends over to the house, he almost never “partied”, spoke
very little to me or my parents (who I speak with almost daily) and spent
almost all his time in his room on the internet playing games. I’m not saying
any of these traits are bad per se, possibly a little unhealthy, but so would
partying too much. More than anything his behavior sort of baffled me and
sometimes hurt my feelings a little. This of course was before I joined Peace
Corps.
For the last 18 months I have lived with two host families
and neither of them have spoken English. They have welcomed me into their home
been overwhelmingly kind and patient with me as I struggle to communicate and
integrate. As incredible as these families have been toward me it hasn’t been
without frustration and adjustments on both sides. Constantly being around
people speaking a foreign language is exhausting, even when you’ve been
speaking it for 18 months. Being at a dinner party where, the conversation is
moving too quickly to follow, so you can’t really jump in and no one is asking
you a direct question, can grow quite tedious. No one’s trying to exclude me or
make me feel uncomfortable but there is a language barrier there and I haven’t
quite broken it. So after about 20 minutes or so of smiling politely and zoning
out I excuse myself from the table. Sometimes, later my host mother will knock
on my door and make sure I’m not upset about something and I try to explain
that I’m tired and it’s difficult for me to understand the conversations. But I
don’t think she really understands, she’s never left Romania (much as she’d
like to) and has little experience with foreign that aren’t me. Its times like
these I think of my brother.
Here I am, spending all my time in my room “alone” and it
must baffle my host mother to no end (and culturally “alone time” isn't necessarily
valued the same here). I don’t generally feel alone or even lonely in my room.
I’m almost constantly communicating with someone, be it an email to Peace Corps,
a chat message from a friend or a skype session with my parents. Because I spend
all day being somewhat socially awkward with my colleagues and students it just
feels good to go home and communicate effectively with someone, anyone. Then I start
to wonder if this is how my brother feels sometimes and maybe that’s part of
drives him into his room and keeps him from responding to my skype messages.
I guess what I’ve come to understand is that yearning for
communication and understanding from someone else and how people express that
need differently. It’s strange to go from someone who will chat everyone up at
party to the person sitting in the corner quietly. I gain a new sympathy for
people that regularly feel awkward and uncomfortable in social situations in their
own culture. Though who knows how well I’ll fit in anywhere after being gone
for over 2 years.
