Foreign Policy

  Lets all close our eyes and pretend….

What would my life be like if I lived in another country? Not as a native. As a foreigner.  Perhaps for school. I could study art or fashion in Paris. Or perhaps  the Culinary arts in Paris or Italy. Somehow, some way I have ended up in another country because I firmly believe being there will enrich my life. Improve my life. Heighten my prospects. Give me happiness.

From the first second off of the plane the differences are already apparent. Thank god for the little man and woman generic symbols on bathroom doors or else there would have been an international incident right away. Lets assume I am super organized and am already prepared with a place to stay, because knowing a fair rate for an out of country hotel may prove challenging. And Oh wait, I have to exchange my money for their money first anyway. How do I pay my cab driver? Oh well, perhaps I will walk to the nearest location that will exchange American currency. If the world makes sense that would be in or near the international airport. But so often the world does not make sense so I can’t guarantee that. Maybe I was super organized and had immaculate credit and have an American Express card, which is supposed to be everywhere I want to be. I have my doubts about that too but I won’t be a Negative Nelly. After all, I just got here.

Perhaps armed with my new address, American Express card that actually does want to be wherever I am, and a cab driver that I can point to an address on a map I will get to my new home in a timely manner. Unpack. Refresh. Oh yes. School. As anyone who has ever been enrolled in college can tell you, it’s a lot of red tape and jumping through hoops. Imagine red tape and jumping through hoops from 10,000 miles away. You’d better have thighs of steel because that will have exhausted me before I even get there. I’m mentally and physically exhausted before the first day of school starts. Hopefully I had sense enough to get there a month before the semester starts.

I’m a social person. Maybe after a day of jet-lag I want to see the town, go out and meet some people. I don’t speak the language but people are people, right, so that shouldn’t mean anything.  Quickly I realize that talking to me simply is too much work for most people. It’s like suddenly being thrown into a classroom when you never agreed to be a teacher and aren’t even getting paid. Beyond commenting that I have a quaint accent and chuckling at a few of my pronunciation quirks, conversations don’t go far. And as we all know, Rosetta Stone included, the ONLY way to get fluent in a new language is to converse in it. I get strange looks from the people who’s reaction to me is, “If she wants to be here she needs to learn the language!” (Despite the fact that I’m fresh off the plane and haven’t had time to learn ‘from the horse’s mouth so to speak). The other, more willing persons only get through the every day niceties. Which means I soon can say ‘Hello’, ‘How are you’, and ‘I am fine thank you’. Not enough to ever be fluent. Much less order in a restaurant. I may forever be pointing to the menu when I’m lucky enough to have a picture menu, and totally massacring fancy foreign dish names when I’m not that lucky. Oh, wait, the dishes aren’t foreign. I am. Can’t forget that. But when I don’t speak the native language fluently can I ever really forget I’m  foreign? I don’t think so.

Let’s not forget when I start classes. Those classes are in the language that I don’t speak. I may quickly learn words related to my topic of study but that still doesn’t help me with regular everyday conversations. And will I have a patient teacher that will take the extra effort that I may sometimes require for instructions on assignments, or explaining the finer points of a subject where a simple analogy clears up the problem for others, but I don’t understand some of the words in her ‘simple’ analogy. I certainly hope so. Because that bright future I planned for myself, a lot of it depends on my teachers' patience and ability as a teacher. I hope that they have the inclination to offer specialized help, as well as the time and skill.

I’m so far from home! Making friends is difficult because I am different and don’t understand a lot of what people say, especially when they talk very fast. I don’t like to admit that I don’t understand because I don’t want to appear stupid. I’m not stupid, I’m actually very smart but so few people can realize that because I don’t have the language skills and they don’t have the patience. Because I am surrounded by such a different culture than my own I have to actively work to keep my own culture alive in myself. (What is my culture? As a side point, I don’t even know. McDonalds and country music? Who knows.)

Let’s heap on top of that another factor. What if people automatically mistrusted or hated me because of my being from America. Or because of my skin color. Or because of my religion. Perhaps I would become the one size fits all cookie from their personal prejudiced cookie cutter. And what if no matter what I said, no matter what I did, no matter how I conducted myself I could never be anything to them but some personification of their own bigotry. What if they never saw me for me.

OK, lets wake up to reality. I was getting kind of scared. But here I am, in my secure little English speaking town living my little English speaking life surrounded by my English speaking friends. Could this situation have played out? It could have. However in most other countries, a huge majority of the people have at least a little knowledge of the English language. They cater to us. I’m sure there are places where Americans are hated but that’s not a frequent occurrence. I’m sure there are places where Christianity is a foreign idea. And where someone as pale as I am would get stares that would make me blush and that would provoke more stares. But for the most part, when I talk to my friends that have traveled to another country for a visit or as a foreign exchange student, their experiences have been positive and enjoyable. They come home with actually a surprising few foreign words learned, because nearly everyone they came in contact with knew enough English for them to get their points across.

What am I trying to say? I’m not really sure. I have this impression that people who come here legitimately to better their lives and take care of their families are judged based on appearance, race, religion, and placed into their own little category of our preconceived ideas. When they speak their native tongue, they are told to ‘learn English’. When they practice their native customs they are belittled and put down for being different. For being strange. We question their traditions and make our judgments without asking questions. We assume that when someone can’t hold a ‘normal’ conversation with us in English that they are somehow intellectually inferior.  In order for someone to come here and face all of this, they have to be incredibly brave. I would never be brave enough. I am envious. I believe lessons in hard work, determination, and perseverance despite adversity can all be learned from such people. Because here, surrounded by us, they don’t have it easy.