Romania is pretty cool. I could write about how fast the time has gone and how different it is than the United States but that is to be expected. Of course the time has flown by for me, of course Romania is different than the United States. I spend all of my time lesson planning and teaching. Time tends to fly by when your life consists of those activities. Nothing to see here, move along. Romania IS different than the United States because it is, wait for it, another country! Nothing to see here either, move along.
What I am saying here is this: 99% of the people who read this blog have had time fly in their lives, been in another country, or both. More than likely, both have happened. I don’t feel like preaching to the choir.
The only thing I feel like writing about are some the people I have encountered here, two in particular. I will not use their full names because they do not know I am writing this and I do not want them feeling uncomfortable if they find out I have. I will call them M&M because their first names both start with M. I am incredibly lucky that I met these two people and their friends. They made me feel completely welcome from the first moment I met them and I can’t imagine Timisoara without them now. I have been here 3 weeks but I already know that I will miss them dearly whenever my time here is over.
They invited me to their church, introduced me to their friends and made any lingering homesickness vanish. There is something comforting about being around people that you know are good all the way through and that helped me tremendously. The time I spend with them and their friends is not all hunky dory, however. The language barrier is utterly frustrating at times. I am pretty sure they all speak at least some English but they are periods of time where I hear nothing but Romanian. I mean, hours of Romanian and only a few comments my way in English that let me know what’s going on. It can be really taxing sometimes.
Don’t get me wrong, I know that it would be completely selfish of me to expect them to speak English all the time just because I am around and I do not expect them to. I am just expressing my frustrations at the language barrier. I have begun trying to teach myself Romanian to alleviate this problem but it is a complicated language, especially for a guy who is terrible at learning new languages. I have been offered the opportunity to take some Romanian lessons and I will be definitely be taking that up!
Anyways, the real reason I decided to write this post was because of an email I received from M&M about an hour ago. I quote:
“You know….it’s probably a cliche to say ’you ended up here in Romania for a reason’, but in your case, I strongly feel that it’s more than just a cliche if I say that. Seriously..it’s weird..I just feel that you will get some unique experience from this year you’ll spend here, something that will change you and that will influence your journey from here on… Just don’t let it pass by..”
I won’t!
dscarroll
Posted by Stephanie on October 13, 2010 at 5:37 pm
I just happened to check this. Woot.