Culture Shock, Courage, and Too Many "Ands"
I've been looking at all kinds of volunteering projects lately, especially in Romania. I want to go work in an orphanage, work with little kids, or toddlers, or teach English, or nature conservation. I have no idea if I'm ready for it, which is frustrating. Can you feel totally scared and still be a perfectly adequate volunteer? Or should you wait until you feel strong and fearless? I'm quite confused. I'm also worried that some part of me wants to do it just for the glory or building character or making myself look accomplished. I do want to show myself that I can get out there and do stuff and work through it. I want to improve myself. I did it before -- in Barcelona, in Almeria. Spain was not kind to me. I had to wrestle with it. I had to ignore the sweat running down my face and hold back the tears that wanted to and repeat myself in Spanish again and again, and try not to think of home because it hurt. A place like Romania could be like that, even though they do pick you up at the airport and help you and there's support around you.
I love to think of studying Romanian before I would leave. I love the thought of helping people. I love the thought of strengthening myself.
But I don't know if going to Europe actually strengthened me or just warped me. I don't feel good when I think about that first week in Spain. It was, truly, the worst time of my life. I called my mom from a payphone in Monistrol de Montserrat and asked her to get Nathan and I a flight home. But we didn't go home. We kept going, through grafitti and confusing train stations, palm trees and desert, Spanish and Arabic, smoke and overcast and sugar. And what did we find? We found Granada, as dark and glittering as the sequined Arabic rugs we bought in the cave-like stores. We found Ronda, high, proud, cramped, white and rocky, Indian cuisine and ravens, roses on the hotel wallpaper. We found the kind of close warmth you find on a summer evening in the backyard with parents and siblings and bare feet, dry grass and barbeque.
The tough morphs into the tranquil and terrific, never tender, but close, sometimes so close -- a catching of the eyes with a local, a child, a goatherder, the people watching from windows guarding their geraniums and clotheslines.
I don't know if I'm ready for it all again. I don't know if fear and doubt is okay. I don't know if I'd fit in, if I'm competent, if I'm hard-working, if I could do it alone and truly be unselfish.
What better to do with your life than help others? And why is it so hard to find the guts to do it?
I love to think of studying Romanian before I would leave. I love the thought of helping people. I love the thought of strengthening myself.
But I don't know if going to Europe actually strengthened me or just warped me. I don't feel good when I think about that first week in Spain. It was, truly, the worst time of my life. I called my mom from a payphone in Monistrol de Montserrat and asked her to get Nathan and I a flight home. But we didn't go home. We kept going, through grafitti and confusing train stations, palm trees and desert, Spanish and Arabic, smoke and overcast and sugar. And what did we find? We found Granada, as dark and glittering as the sequined Arabic rugs we bought in the cave-like stores. We found Ronda, high, proud, cramped, white and rocky, Indian cuisine and ravens, roses on the hotel wallpaper. We found the kind of close warmth you find on a summer evening in the backyard with parents and siblings and bare feet, dry grass and barbeque.
The tough morphs into the tranquil and terrific, never tender, but close, sometimes so close -- a catching of the eyes with a local, a child, a goatherder, the people watching from windows guarding their geraniums and clotheslines.
I don't know if I'm ready for it all again. I don't know if fear and doubt is okay. I don't know if I'd fit in, if I'm competent, if I'm hard-working, if I could do it alone and truly be unselfish.
What better to do with your life than help others? And why is it so hard to find the guts to do it?