All this is harder than I thought. I go between feeling like an outsider because people are staring at me, and feeling like an outsider because I blend in but am all alone and no one notices me.
It's not that I'm not happy (and for goodness sake don't let my host mom believe otherwise!), it's just hard. And it's not that I expected it to be easy, just that I thought it would be more of an adventure. Instead, it's the daily exhaustion of thinking things twice in different languages, of being watched because I'm a woman, because I'm an American, because I'm young, and (sometimes) because I'm by myself, of hearing the buzz of human communication on the metro and not being able to pick out more than a few phrases. It's that daily grind, that longing to be accepted and to UNDERSTAND and to be understood that's got me feeling a little down.
2 comments:
I always struggled with that, wanting to get more involved in the 'local color' but either being too afraid or too bad at Hindi/French/Whatever. And when you're around other Americans, and you can all talk without spending 5 minutes trying to figure out what the other is saying, its SO nice. After a while though, I got used to the buzz of conversation around me that I didn't understand - so much so, that when I went back into English speaking territory, I couldn't help but feel as if I was eavesdropping on every conversation simply because I UNDERSTOOD them.
I believe you that it's hard. I wish I could hear about your experiences more. I've kind of come up against a brick wall here, and I go back to school in a couple weeks. The top two look doubtful. I'm nervous about three.
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