The Highs & Lows of Living in a City Where Few Understand You #1

Low: Where worry meets newness...

I came in to the first day of orientation a little nervous and excited.  I felt like I was lucky in having studied abroad, having had a decent amount of experience in learning and speaking Spanish and having taught as my career.  I felt a little cocky even that these were my jams and that I could handle them with ease.  The more we waited to see our families, the more insecure I was starting to feel. Like a kid who doesn’t have their parent show up for a recital or field trip, or being the last to be picked up.  I was really starting to feel abandoned! (Which is totally crazy since I later found out that my host mom just got confused at the time she was supposed to come!) 

I wanted my host mom to come and meet me!

I am notorious for jumping to a conclusion based on written text.  This is a bad habit that I’m constantly working on in this digital age of written dialogue in email and text.  I worry over how much or little someone writes to me.  Or over how many exclamation points they use or don’t use.  The meaning inferred, must be that if they don’t use a few exclamation points, they must be upset at me.  This is insane----I know! It’s just how my inner dialogue works sometimes!  I was starting to worry as my communication with my host family had been pretty short and I had put in some lengthy time composing my emails in Spanish to them. They’d responded, but with shorter ones.  This turned my curiosity to doubt and I worried that I had written incorrectly and had offended someone?  Or that we wouldn’t get on well?  I was hoping to gain some sort of clarity of our budding friendship based on text. 

This doesn’t always happen! I know this in my own life, where we even speak the same language! I know I have some friends and family that just have vastly different writing styles than I do.  I’ll write a novel of a text and they’ll respond with a single word answer.  This makes me crazy! I start to infer all sorts of scenarios and by the time I see them I think that it’s become WWIII.  Eventually, after seeing them in person, it’s usually always resolved and there was never a problem to speak of.  This would be the case soon after!

HIGH: Making a Wonderful Friend!

Finally, my host mom came in and we hit it off from the start! She is wonderful!! She has the friendliest attitude and we spent many a first few hours laughing, joking around and getting to know each other.  Despite shorter emails, I just learned that she doesn’t feel as confident writing in English. 

I got soooo lucky with the family I’m with and they are some of the most welcoming and generous people I’d be lucky to meet. 

We seem to have an easy conversational style in which I don’t feel afraid to ask her questions (however silly) and feel good in helping out and contributing to the family.  This little seed of doubt that can grow into a mountain in my own head would be something for me to perpetually work on during this experience.  It can be especially heightened when doing it in another language.  The protentional for misunderstandings is incredibly high and this nervous mindset could spark serious miscommunications.  It’s not perfect by any means and there are errors in communication, however, if I can slow down enough to use my two ears to listen and mouth to ask questions, much can be resolved. 

I hope to befriend that little voice of doubt in my mind, calm her and see the loveliness there is to see in the worst-feeling situations.