One thing I have repeatedly taken for granted in the U.S is the ability to communicate with almost everyone I came into contact with. Questions like: “How much does this cost?” “Where is the bathroom?” “How do I get to ___?” are easily conveyed in my native tongue, English. I can even manage to ask these vital questions in Mandarin Chinese, the second language I learned in high school. However, choosing to study abroad in Europe, rather than Beijing, presented a few obvious setbacks in the realm of communication.
Upon arriving in Italy, I became quickly aware that I did not know any Italian besides “la donna mangi la mella” which translates to “the woman eats the apple.” I have been here for a month now and that phrase hasn’t been used even once! I wonder why… Instead, I have found myself more in need of basic phrases that my Duolingo training this summer had left me without.
One particular day, I was coming back from the city center and was taking the bus by myself for the first time. Being as idiotic and paranoid as I tend to be, I was convinced I needed to get off the bus about 20 minutes before I needed to. This rash decision left me on a section of Balduina (our local neighborhood) that I had never seen before. Mistakenly believing that I had gotten off the bus too early, I turned around and walked in the direction the bus had come from. Soon I found myself walking up and down the same hill over and over again, and let me tell you, these hills are no joke! I was sweating, tired, hungry, and so lost. Naturally, I thought I should ask someone for how to find Via Massimi, the road the John Felice Rome Center is located on.
Stepping into a small, but quaint cafe (oddly called bars, here) I slowly approached the counter. A smiling older woman greeted me in Italian, “buongiorno!” “Good,” I thought, “I can totally do this. I know some Italian.”
However, knowing a basic greeting like good morning and knowing how to say “I’ve been lost for an hour and half on this godforsaken hill, can you tell me the fastest way to get to Via Massimi?”or even just “where is Via Massimi?”proved to be far more difficult than I would have ever imagined. Soon enough, I was leaving the cafe having received no information other than a collection of confused looks that conveyed this woman did not know English.
Eventually I made it back to campus by using common sense and the check and guess method we learned in elementary school. I was exhausted, but felt triumphant nonetheless, and went into Italian class that afternoon armed with questions on how to ask for simple directions.
Communication barriers exist outside the realm of Rome, too. My first trip outside of Italy was to Paris, France, to see my Loyola roommate and best friend, Arantxa. Not realizing I didn’t know a lick of French (not even “the woman eats the apple, which we now know is essential to traveling around any foreign city), I walked into the Rome airport with confidence and gusto. Soon enough, I found that French was even a larger communication issue than Italian had been for the past month.
The first issue was with the gate. Initially I was very pleased to be early and at the gate more than an hour in advance. Smooth sailing has hardly ever been the phrase to describe my life, though, and before long Ryanair decided to let a flight to Madrid board using the gate intended for our flight, effectively putting us almost an hour behind schedule. Not understanding what was going on, I attempted to communicated with the people around me, only to discover they were all very French and spoke zero English. Instead, an old man and I communicated with a series of smiles, head nods and shakes, hand gestures, and a lot of expressive eye movements. Soon enough, we were communicating in language everyone around the world is familiar with: laughter.
The delay caused more issues for getting on shuttle buses to Paris and then more problems with speaking to cab drivers arose, but we all made it to Paris, safe and sound! Thankfully for the rest of my journey I had Arantxa with me who actually speaks French. The only other communication oddity was speaking with her host madame who truly believe I could understand French despite Arantxa telling her I don’t understand even a little of it!
In the end, it turns out communication is more than just words. We can speak with our eyes, our hands (the Italians especially love that method!), and with our laughter. Even if you don’t know what a person is saying to you, you can still understand and feel what they mean.
But it still comes in handy when you’re in a fix to be able to say “Dove è il bagno????”
