I am going to be so awkward when I come home

An important part of life, important in terms of safety for me but also just important because that’s all people really do, is chatting. Just sitting around chatting. For hours. In host families I always thought it was funny and kind of adorable how neighbors or friends would always manage to come over around meal time, maybe ask two questions and say a few things, then hang out, watch television, get fed and then abruptly leave. To me, such a pointless visit and clearly they did it just to get food. But that’s how it works here and it’s perfectly acceptable.

Which is great because I have exploited it to its fullest. Being blessed to live and work at a rich school where all the teachers live like functionaries with precious perks like guns or televisions or drinking wine, everyone has a refrigerator, one family has a microwave which blew my mind when I saw it. So because they have money I don’t feel bad hanging around for dinner, when I don’t feel like cooking. It works perfectly because I need to visit and be seen and they love having you around even if you don’t do or say anything. Which is very awkward to me, to go over to a neighbors house, sit in their yard and watch the kids play or watch the servant girl cook something and sit there not really talking. But it’s nice and they like the company. It baffles me, but I’m going to get so good at it and be so awkward when I come home. It makes me laugh just to think about that future me, who will find sitting in silence with another person for hours, exchanging a few words, rarely looking at each other and feeling perfectly satisfied with that human interaction.

Granted we don’t have to sit in awkward silence. I have about one million questions I want to ask each person, but I just can’t bring myself to ask a perfect stranger about their hopes and dreams, what they want from life, are they happy, do they get jealous, what have you heard about America, why are you a teacher, what’s your dream job, what’s your dream house, do you like movies, do you read, what do you think about me, what do you think about foreigners, do you want to travel, what terrifies you? These and many more are questions that I want to ask but I just can’t yet bring myself to ask such probing personal questions. Also, I know that I’d stumble over my words and only understand half the answer they give and I want to understand all of it and build off that and talk more and deeper about things. It’s hard.

So more often then not, I’m not brave or comfortable enough to ask the seemingly random probing personal questions to strangers so we sit in silence, because its summer and we haven’t done anything in a day so there’s no new stories to talk about and we really have nothing in common so small talk is basically out of the question.