Looking Back and Learning -Jill Johnson

Reflecting on my semester in Brussels, it’s easy to feel bitter about being brought home so soon. In so short of an amount of time as two months- to the day actually- I feel I learned life skills that could only be gleaned from a trip so wholly unfamiliar as this one. Some of the best experiences were the mishaps that came with learning to live in a city, and another culture.

Moving to a country whose language you don’t speak is an excellent way to start. Comedic in theory, but absolutely painful in practice. Take our very first full day in Brussels. We had been set loose, free to roam the neighborhood. And the first thing that pops into everyone’s minds is: food.

We cannot read the names above the shops, so we pic the first establishment that we come too, a fast food joint, and order based off of a picture by the register. The cashier spoke no English at all, and neither myself nor anyone with me spoke any French. So, we google translated as best we could and took our seats. We had no idea what we had ordered.

Upon its arrival, we all took our best guesses at what we had ordered. Eventually, we

decided that it was a kind of taco. To everyone’s dismay, what was inside the entre was a mixture of strange meat and very stinky cheese. We learned to order quickly after that.

Now, this is a fairly ridiculous example to illustrate my point. Learning adaptability is a skill that you really can only pick up by doing. Adapting to a new language, and a new set of customs was our first lesson. What followed was adapting to working in an environment where we knew no one, and often felt unprepared for the task ahead of us.

Even simple professional tasks posed a challenge in Brussels. One of my first days I was given a computer and asked to call the manufacturer to trouble shoot it. Easy right? Unfortunately for me the company had a specific call center for every country, and in Belgium the operators only spoke French, or Dutch. The process that followed was a painful one. Emails and phone calls and lots of help from my new coworkers to finally find that the computer was a lemon, and needed to be returned.

Before living in a country where I could not easily communicate, I had little appreciation for how often I really needed to communicate with so many different people every single day. But I learned, I adapted, and that if a life skill I will carry with me forever.