"We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home, but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes." - Madeleine L'Engle
"Da" (yes) was her response. As silly as it seems to return empty glass bottles with the romanian brand of brew on them, as though the company only distributes x amount of bottles, or charges each distributor for each bottle they use-- I have this strange sense of community as a result of this mundane routine I would never have to do in America. I wonder who I have shared this bottle with in the community that frequents this store.
"bine, multumesc, La revedere". (Well, thank you! goodbye)
It's rather empowering and humbling to communicate in a foreign culture, and in a foreign language on my own. I have never had to think so hard about what I am saying, and even still mess up what I was trying to say. As broken as I am in my language capabilities, and as foreign as i probably sound, I am thankful I have a rather musical ear, and can at least fudge a romanian accent. Anytime I speak to a native here, I picture myself in LA with a mexican or spanish foreigner talking to me in broken English, and I can really sympathize. That was about the greatest extent to interaction with foreigners I had on a consistent basis up until coming to Eastern Europe.
I picked up 6 hours of English Lessons this week with some Koreans going to a private British School. Two girls age 9 and 12. My heart breaks for my 12 year old student. She came with her family 3 weeks ago. Left all her friends behind, has no friends here, and has little confidence in her ability in school because she cannot speak English very well. Her mom said she was stressed a lot this week, and was sick for two days because of it.
I have been teaching Junghoon Ahn, another Korean, who is 29, 5 hours a week since April. Junghoon is one of my favorite people here. Aside from Amanda's Family, I can vent with him the ridiculousness of the society here. I am also teaching Eun Ji Park, another Korean who goes to Bucharest Christian Academy drum lessons each week. I taught her and her sister English 3 hours a week each this summer.
I received another email from another Korean Family Asking me to teach 4 of them for a total of 10 hours per week, friends of the Lee Family (the 9 and 12 year old girls).
It is interesting to me that I was going to teach English to Koreans in South Korea, until my plans were changed and that opportunity was slammed shut in my face twice.
I didn't expect to teach Koreans here in Romania, and I never expected to identify so well with them. Maybe I was suppose to teach Koreans, but more importantly, maybe I was suppose to identify with them. I probably would never had had the opportunity to relate so well to them in Korea. In Romania, where you have to return empty beer bottles where you bought them, where dogs rule the streets, where you cant keep your windows open at night because of the noise pollution, Where water trucks spray water on the streets to "keep the dust down"--turning all the dirt to mud to be thrown everywhere by automobiles, where you can find flat screen TV's for advertising in the metro stops but can't get clean sheets in a hospital bed, Where you can walk down the street and have the air in your local proximity contaminated with any sort of chemical that may be coming out of a broken compression canister in the bed of a pickup truck that would normally be prohibited from the road because of the excessive black and blue smoke coming out of the tail pipe, Or where English and/or Korean isn't the official language--we are both not home. In a way, we are both the same. We are both foreigners to eachother, but yet foreigners together here.
Maybe that is why I am here and not Korea.
