Stranger

I have been taking a French class at the University of Avignon for a couple weeks now, hammering out the finer points of using the subjunctive tense (far be it from me to use it in an English sentence) but most importantly, finding people that I can call my own group of friends in this new (and very old) place. Over the past few years I have traveled to a number of countries foreign to my own, trying my best to meet people and get immersed in cultures that can open my eyes to different ways of life. Nearly without fail, though, I find myself surrounded with strangers from all over the globe, though not from the country where we all have chosen to install ourselves.

In India two years ago while walking through a market, my roommate Alicia overheard a group of Mexicans speaking her mother tongue. Instantly, we were surrounded by more Mexicans than Indians, sampling the nightlife with the rest of their international community. Americans training engineers, Germans working in NGOs, and a whole host of other nations plying their trades in the developing hotspot that is Hyderabad.

Today when I'm not surrounded by David's family and friends, how lucky I am to have been welcomed by all of them, I find myself in a French world made up of a bunch of Americans, Brits, Germans, Spaniards, South Africans, Canadians, and South Koreans, and many of the minute variations within those worldly classifications. I am picking myself through a foreign language riddled with accents from the four corners. Amid the explosive laughter of our Korean classmate and the Andalucian French of another (on parle franthais), not to forget the underarticulating American English speakers, somehow we manage to communicate and get along.

No matter where, we are all seeking how to get along with a place that is totally strange to us, our common bond. In India we discussed bartering tactics, “What is a good first offer?” and “I’m always better at bartering for underwear than pretty things that I really want, try practicing on underwear,” and we sought to become local, understanding the different neighborhoods and all they had to offer. Banjara Hills is a beautiful neighborhood with no reason to visit, Charminar is crowded and dangerous but follow your nose through the flower market to the alleyways of glittering bangles and you’ll forget about time and have to hire a rickshaw back to your rural apartment (a situation that usually ends in a shouting match because now he can’t find a fare to take back to town). Here in France we discuss the completely arbitrary opening and closing hours of administrative offices so as not to look like tourists, waiting outside a closed office all afternoon. We carry baguettes under our arms like they were flags proclaiming to the people we pass in the city, “Look! I’m like you!” Though we can’t help but consume too many pains au chocolate and speak too loud, our voices echoing off the walls of narrow streets when we conglomerate in herds of Americans.

Culture shock does not come from without, it is what happens when you get to a different place and realize you have lost all of your survival skills... or rather, that those you brought with you are no longer compatible. What is left is a big, ambulatory, and capable baby wandering around frustrated, but not powerless thanks to other people just the same. It is an experience shared by, I think, all the travelers I have met as we seek to glean understanding and experience from each other. How do I? Where do I? Why is it? We are flooded with questions like kids again, trying to understand a world that, though it has welcomed and cared for us, still gives no answers as to what it is or why. As we grow up in these new places, perhaps we get cynical, or perhaps we grow to love these new places even more. Already, my disdain for French office hours has taken a new turn, two hours for lunch is something I can get used to. It’s nice to be able to experience the people you are eating with, not the work you’ve gotten food stains all over because you are in a hurry to do it all at once. No matter what we learn or how we value our experiences I feel like I have experienced many times what it was like to be a child, to form my ideas about the world. The more this happens, the more I find myself in a twentysomething’s conundrum of “Gee! What do I know for sure? Do I only know what I don’t know!?” While this question could fascinate for hours, here is one thing I know: The world has many vistas, some that are welcome, some that are horrifying, some that spoil, and some that illuminate. No one person can have them all, but we are blessed to be humans with the ability to consider these different regards, to hold and weigh my world against yours is a powerful tool of communication and understanding. However pidgin-creole it turns out, however accented, it can only help to see more of each other, to become better neighbors.