Embarrassing Tales of an Exchange Student
Warning: This post is not PG.
For years, a standard question in my SAPA interviews has been "How would you incorporate the bad experiences you had abroad when advising someone to study abroad?" Usually, I get one of two responses: "I can't really think of anything." or "Well, my friend got robbed, and another friend was arrested..." My favorites are still Adam with "A bad day in Hong Kong was still better than a good day here." Chelsea's "Well, we saw a dead man on the metro tracks on our first day." Or, again, Adam with one of his monkey stories. The ideal answer, if there is one, is of course "there were tough times, cultural adjustment, difficult classes, homesickness, but I overcame them all by doing bla bla blah; I persevered and study abroad is freaking amazing."
Recently, a new SAPA turned things around on me and said "What was your worst experience abroad?" Well, I still am abroad, but I hadn't thought about my first year on exchange in that way for a while. The first thing that came to mind was all the little misunderstandings because of the language barrier, and culture not coming with a manual (it should, damn it!). For instance, they should tell you that when wearing a boy's class ring, it is generally understood that you are going out with him. So when I asked Todd, the clarinet player, if I could wear his piece of funky bling, and proceeded to sport it on my thumb, I had no idea people would talk. For to be honest, Todd, while a nice guy, was absolutely not my type and I had absolutely no intentions of that sort with him. And he was probably wondering why I wasn't putting out...
It was times like these that I would arrive at home wailing at my host mom Deb, saying "Why didn't you tell me?" and "Is there anything else I need to know?" Of course, there never was ... until the next mishap.
The other (mortifying) experiences for me came by way of having learned British English in high school. I once asked the girl sitting in front of me in Senior English for a rubber and she looked at me weird, so I repeated "you know, a rubber" along with jerky hand motions until she got it and said "oh, you mean an eraser!"
Again, I arrive home to ask "What's a rubber?" You imagine my surprise. And no, you don't ask a 16-year-old girl for a rubber in Randolph Country, North Carolina.
The worst one that year (and years later I still remember these): I'm at a guy friend's house and we're standing in the yard with his mom, when I hear crowing and I say excitedly, "You have a cock!" (I absolutely love chickens.) Mom's face falls, guy's face breaks into a wide grin. I know I messed up; I do not know why. We get to the car and I say "What did I say back there?" - "Are you sure you want me to tell you?" Of course not.
I get home and Deb translates. I guess it's a good thing I didn't say "You have a gorgeous 'rooster'" or "That's a a nice, big 'rooster' you have" or "Look at the plumage on your 'rooster'"! Oh, the many ways this could have been worse!
That said, the only way to learn a language is to use it and make mistakes. It's not always fun, but you definitely always remember the results.
:)
For years, a standard question in my SAPA interviews has been "How would you incorporate the bad experiences you had abroad when advising someone to study abroad?" Usually, I get one of two responses: "I can't really think of anything." or "Well, my friend got robbed, and another friend was arrested..." My favorites are still Adam with "A bad day in Hong Kong was still better than a good day here." Chelsea's "Well, we saw a dead man on the metro tracks on our first day." Or, again, Adam with one of his monkey stories. The ideal answer, if there is one, is of course "there were tough times, cultural adjustment, difficult classes, homesickness, but I overcame them all by doing bla bla blah; I persevered and study abroad is freaking amazing."
Recently, a new SAPA turned things around on me and said "What was your worst experience abroad?" Well, I still am abroad, but I hadn't thought about my first year on exchange in that way for a while. The first thing that came to mind was all the little misunderstandings because of the language barrier, and culture not coming with a manual (it should, damn it!). For instance, they should tell you that when wearing a boy's class ring, it is generally understood that you are going out with him. So when I asked Todd, the clarinet player, if I could wear his piece of funky bling, and proceeded to sport it on my thumb, I had no idea people would talk. For to be honest, Todd, while a nice guy, was absolutely not my type and I had absolutely no intentions of that sort with him. And he was probably wondering why I wasn't putting out...
It was times like these that I would arrive at home wailing at my host mom Deb, saying "Why didn't you tell me?" and "Is there anything else I need to know?" Of course, there never was ... until the next mishap.
The other (mortifying) experiences for me came by way of having learned British English in high school. I once asked the girl sitting in front of me in Senior English for a rubber and she looked at me weird, so I repeated "you know, a rubber" along with jerky hand motions until she got it and said "oh, you mean an eraser!"
Again, I arrive home to ask "What's a rubber?" You imagine my surprise. And no, you don't ask a 16-year-old girl for a rubber in Randolph Country, North Carolina.
The worst one that year (and years later I still remember these): I'm at a guy friend's house and we're standing in the yard with his mom, when I hear crowing and I say excitedly, "You have a cock!" (I absolutely love chickens.) Mom's face falls, guy's face breaks into a wide grin. I know I messed up; I do not know why. We get to the car and I say "What did I say back there?" - "Are you sure you want me to tell you?" Of course not.
I get home and Deb translates. I guess it's a good thing I didn't say "You have a gorgeous 'rooster'" or "That's a a nice, big 'rooster' you have" or "Look at the plumage on your 'rooster'"! Oh, the many ways this could have been worse!
That said, the only way to learn a language is to use it and make mistakes. It's not always fun, but you definitely always remember the results.
:)
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