Back to Being a Baby - Part 2

About a year ago, Dan wrote a post about how we would need to go back to the status of “baby”. He talked about how we’d be entering a culture in which we would need to learn how to do all the basics in life like getting food, riding a bus, paying our rent, and so on. Even though all of these things we would be experts at doing in our own culture, we would need to totally learn everything new upon moving into a new culture. We may be adults physically, but socially, culturally, and linguistically we would be total infants.

Well, we are now three months into our new culture, and it’s confirmed we certainly are “babies”. Although we’ve learned many things such as where to buy food, how to pay our rent, which tram to take, and how to interact with strangers who talk to us on the street. One challenge is that we don’t look anything like babies. So while we understand and have accepted that there is always more for us to learn in this new culture, we’ve also needed to learn that often others’ expectations of us are much higher than we are capable of meeting.

The Question

The other day we went out to lunch after church with a group of friends from the Deaf church that we have been attending since we have been living here in Romania.  Our new friends have been very gracious and patient while they teach us Romanian Sign Language (RomSL).  Carolyn and I have made substantial progress in our basic conversational ability, but we are still sorting a lot of the basics out. If I’m truthful, I will admit that there are times that I do not completely understand what our new friends are saying, but often I can understand the main concepts.

The First Week

At the time I am writing this, Carolyn and I are in the middle of our 5th week here in Oradea, Romania, our new host city and culture.  We are very slowly starting to become more and more comfortable with the basic functions of life here in our new home, but I feel that I must share with you both the high and low of my primary daily goal in our first week: eating.

During the first few days here our friends in the city invited us over for breakfast, took us out for lunch, etc. and really helped us out with the major meals of the day.  We could order food with their help by just ordering the same thing they got and hand them our money.  It worked fine, but in the back of my mind I knew that eventually I would need to learn how to obtain food on my own.