By Hannah Feustle Abroad writer
I used to see this writing prompt all the time: what if you woke up one day and no one could understand you? After a single evening with my Russian host mother, I knew the answer.
I got to the university almost in tears, trying not to cry as I listened to everyone around me talking about how they are still understood, how great their host families are. The people in my program have had three to five semesters of Russian. I messed around on Duolingo for a year—enough to understand maybe half of what’s being said at any given time.
I followed as Marina Vasilyevna, my host mom, told me that this one was my room, that this one was hers, that these were my towels, that soap could go there. Then I stopped following, and we pulled out our laptops and typed into translators. She told me that I should unpack.
Then the translator apps ran into their usual problems as she started to tell me about the hot water heater and the shower. The translation app told me: “It’s bad. You have to leave the hot water in the shower running while you brush your teeth.” I worried about this while I showered. I pulled on pajamas and looked into the kitchen, the water splashing behind me, knowing it couldn’t be right.
“Why is the water still running?” she asked, and I turned it off. She asked, “Did you already brush your teeth? Do you brush your teeth at night?” I can’t say “I have not done it yet,” or “I am confused.” I get clumsy when I’m nervous. I walked into a column sticking out from the wall five times, forgot how to eat, dropped things.
The next day, I went to a cafe with a few other students. The servers recognized us as American and the one who could speak the most English was sent over to us. He told us something about a long table with enough chairs for all of us. We tried to order. None of us knew how to phrase it. We gave the most confusing order that anyone could have placed, all of us using different phrases to start off the sentences. I saw the waiter rubbing his forehead as he put the order into the computer.
“I’m kind of glad everyone’s having a hard time,” someone said after a while. “I was so worried when everyone said their homestay was great.”
And everyone burst out with something like my story. One girl said her host family had her eat alone. Another said her window was open a little and she didn’t know how to close it. I told them I had to brush my teeth twice that morning, because I didn’t know how to say I had already done it.
I told the person giving the language exam that there is a bedroom in my bedroom and a pair of glasses on the wall.
When I got home later, Marina asked why I didn’t have class the next day and I said I don’t know. But she thought I was saying I don’t understand and typed it into the translation app. She thought I meant that I wanted to go to bed right away after I took a shower, so at 8 p.m. I was in my room.
I listened to her talk on the phone in the kitchen. She said something is beautiful. I had the terrible feeling that I was doing this wrong. She has told me no rules. I don’t know how to ask.
But tomorrow—I know this now— tomorrow, if I ask, I’ll find that I’m not the only person having an awkward time.
And it’s not all bad. Marina talks to me in Russian as we go to the metro station, makes me point to where our apartment is, shows me the yellow line on the ground and tells me to stand behind it, shows me how to hold my purse so no one will take it. I understand that much.
After dinner, I ran into the column in the wall again and she pulled me back to her laptop and said that I would adapt to it in time. We both laughed at that one, and it was the first time I laughed and meant it.
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