By jcapobia
I made a German friend this week.
A week and a half into my study abroad experience I have finally made my first non-American friend. I’m not sure if I should be embarrassed because it took so long, but I’m happy it happened. Since most of my classes are with 1 to 3 of the other kids in my GW Madrid program, its very hard to meet other students. However, that all changed this week when I had a meeting for the law school. After the orientation, all the students were marched down to the basement, where in an aggressive, yet effective maneuver, we were all locked in the basement and forced to socialize and eat stale h'orderves.
Now, normally I consider myself a pretty good small talker, so in a situation like this I’d usually be fine. However, this situation was different because I honestly had no idea what language to talk to people in. Walking around the room, I heard some broken English, some rapid-fire Spanish, some German, French, Italian, etc. I tried to follow the English and join that conversation because I wasn’t very confident in joining a Spanish conversation with native speakers, but I couldn’t really hone in on any English.
After a few seconds of looking around I made awkward eye contact with a very tall blonde haired man. I said “hola,” to him, which he returned with a half smile. After a few awkward seconds, I asked him how it was going in both Spanish and English, to which he responded “good.” From there I learned he was a student from Cologne, Germany, studying Spanish here in Madrid for the semester. While we spoke, other people (mostly Eastern European) came up to talk to us, hearing our English and looking to join the conversation (We were eventually forced to speak Spanish). Although we ran into many miscommunication pitfalls, we ultimately bonded, exchanged numbers, and made a group chat named, “Erasmus Party People.” (Erasmus is a EU student exchange program)
I think different groups of people have real and imaginary barriers between them, whether they be cultural, linguistic, etc. Normally people would prefer to remain with people like themselves, this prevents misunderstanding, fosters kinship, and instills familiarity. In its most basic form, as children we were guilty of this self-segregation. When I was in preschool, I was definitely reluctant to hang out with girls because they were different and had drastically different interests. (Also had cooties).
As we grow up we self-segregate ourselves and hang out with people that look like us, act like us, speak like us, or share similar interests. It is a constantly self-affirming circle, that challenges no one and closes our minds. Studying abroad gives us a great opportunity to meet people from all over the world. Sometimes the greatest people we can meet are those who are unlike us, because they change us the most and open up our minds.
It may not always be true that opposites attract, but they sure form stronger bonds than like charges.
