Categories: uncategorized
Date: 20 March 2006 17:24:27
I landed in a foreign country.
I'd been abroad once before, as a child, on a primary school trip. But that was a long time ago, and I've nearly finished the job of wiping my school years from my memory, so that time doesn't count. (Except for one thing: the casino, but I'll come back to that another time).
So this was really my first trip abroad. And also my first time on a plane - I still find it funny how blasé I am now about the whole business of going through airports and onto planes, and how terrified I was then - not through any fear of flying, just that the checking in and security checks etc made for such a complicated process that I was sure I was going to go through the wrong door sometime and never escape.
I knew little of the country and nothing of the language so when I landed I was desparately searching for the familiar face of the person supposed to be meeting me. When I finally saw them it struck me how quickly a terrible desperation can turn into huge waves of relief. But the next morning I was on my own again, and faced with the most simple of tasks becoming infuriatingly hard. I wanted breakfast from a cafe, and there was one nearby. They had the cute idea of labelling their various different breakfast options with suitably breakfasty names, like "good morning" and "nice day". Which, I thought, would save me having to rattle off a lisit of things I wanted. Except that, when you go up to the bar in a cafe and say "good morning", even pointing to the menu is not going to be enough to convey the fact that you are trying to order the thing they've called a "good morning". In fact, they're liable to say "good morning" back at you. Infuriating.
Most times since then when I've been in a foreign country I've known enough of the language to avoid such hopeless situations. Up until now. Today I've again felt that complete inability to communicate but, with 12 years more confidence, I feel greatly more relaxed about it. Oh, and there is the fact that everyone speaks English. For once I'm somewhere where that's actually true, not just something that pathetic little Englanders say to each other to justify their despicable laziness about bothering to give other people the basic respect of learning to speak their language. Rant? Me?