Anxiety about study abroad

There I was, standing, in the check-out line of the Chinese market in Rockville, Maryland, listening to the cashier yell at me with an incomprehensible stream of syllables. This was after a rather harrowing attempt to find groceries in the overcrowded store. A year of Chinese wasn't helping me as I stood in front of an entire display of green vegetables, trying to figure out which sign would lead me to my desired product. During all of this, my accompanying friend turned to me and said, "This is how crowded it will be wherever you go in China."

And that dire prediction was ringing through my head as the cashier gestured wildly at me, using those hand signals that often traverse cultural boundaries-apparently, there was a $15 minimum charge for credit cards. It should be easy, really: I know the word for credit card in Chinese, and I know how to count, so don't the two just go together to form sentences? Or at least key phrases?

After I had finally exited the market to fresh suburban air, I began to wonder how, exactly, I would ever be able to navigate the streets of Beijing when this tiny market in Maryland was like entering the Twilight Zone. With study abroad looming before me, it is no longer about the clichéd once-in-a-lifetime experience, but more of a survival from vicious, gesticulating hordes. It's more about me versus the entire Chinese nation, and I can already tell you who has the upper hand.

Study-abroad has never been a more popular decision than it is now-according to Vistawide.com's statistics: there has been a 250% increase over the past decade of American students studying abroad. So other than an extended feeling of acute embarrassment one is destined to discover, why is it again that I am willing to go to not one but two, strange foreign locale in the course of a year?

It isn't something I can easily explain as I fill out compositions and paperwork for OIP "to help ease the transition." It isn't something I can easily explain to my parents when they ask why they should fork over a huge deposit for a program on the other side of the world.

Of course, there is always the standard reason that learning a new culture will help you better appreciate your own place in the world. And while there is certainly truth in that, I can't say that that would drive me to spend months in a frighteningly new atmosphere. Perhaps it's much simpler-just the fact that I will be so far out of my safety zone that even going to a convenience store to buy shampoo will be a harrowing adventure. I'll just try to remember that it is all worth it while abroad, or at the very least, I'll fall back on those hand gestures.

 - Alison Goodrich

Source: The Georgetown Independent; Issue Date: 3/28/07

March 28, 2007