Learning Journal Entry #10

[Nicolas Dacey]

Cross Cultural Experience

Unfortunately for me, I have not had much cross cultural experience. I have never actually traveled outside of the United States, except to Canada, and both trips there were to English speaking areas. So really the only interaction I have had has been with people who were visiting the United States. This past summer, the woman who took care of my parents when they lived in Romania for a year visited us. She is the cousin of my grandmother, so we had a somewhat close family relationship. The fun part about her visit was the fact that she could not speak a word of English. I had to go through my mother to translate in order to have a conversation with her. When my mom would leave the room, I was then stuck with her, unable to communicate and feeling awkward. She, on the other hand, did not mind a bit. She would smile and enjoy where she was, not caring about the fact that this young boy could not speak to her at all. After the first day, I decided to give communication a try and began using hand gestures and making facial expressions in order to convey ideas across to her. In return, she began teaching me Romanian words and phrases (with some help from my mom). By the last couple days she was with us, every time I would use Romanian, she would praise my hard work and say "da" which means yes (apparently yes is a very common word for agreement in Romanian and can be used in many ways, simply by changing inflection of the voice). It was fun learning how to communicate with someone in a challenging way, and it made me wish that she could stay for more time. I told my mom after she left that now I understood why visiting a country is so helpful to learn a language. When you surround yourself by the language and are forced to use it, it becomes more entrained in your mind.