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Sunday night.
I met with the director of the residence halls this morning, and we had a short, helpful, and confusing talk. She said she'd talk to the worst of the girls from last night, and I'll talk to her on Tuesday to see if she's done so by then. It was a bit easier to talk to her about the problems than the security guard, just on the basis of gender - if I say "girls being catty" to another female from the same culture, she probably knows what I mean from firsthand experience. Just because there's nothing overt spoken doesn't mean there's no harm intended.
She said she wanted the residence halls to be safe, open spaces for people to live with their peers and get to interact with other people because the city can be so big and lonely, especially to people who've just moved here. So she wanted to make sure I was okay with living here. And I can appreciate that.
But it's still confusing.
The director said she didn't want me to be isolated, and wanted me to have friends. And I didn't tell her I did have friends all over the world, even in Finland. Just because I talk to most of my friends through my computer doesn't mean I'm isolated. She said that even though there's a lot of people in the city, it's easy to be lonely. Which is, oddly, exactly the problem I've got right now. The people here - they aren't my peers. They're not the sort of people I'd have made friends with back in school, in any school. Kindergarten all the way through grad. I can be friendly with just about all of them, but once I'm gone from here, I won't want to keep track of them. They're not the sort of person I'd want to keep track of, or stay in touch with.
In some ways, I'm more isolated from living with a lot of people I don't really fit in with, than if I was living in my own space and could make more choices about my social interactions.
I explained to the director that a lot of trouble with the other girls came from communication barriers, and in not being able to break those down. The metaphor I used was that it felt like I was speaking German and the rest of them were using Cantonese. It's clearly language and verbal speech, but there's no way to communicate directly. Which I suppose is why I'm in this situation right now.
I've tried speaking to them, and I've tried explaining to them why their methods of communication are so difficult for me to decipher, and they keep on with what they've always been doing, never minding what I've said or tried. And it's strange, given that I spend so much energy trying to meet other people at a halfway point, figuring out the right thing to say and sound effortless the way other people do - it doesn't seem quite right that no one else makes any effort when they speak.
She said she wanted the residence halls to be safe, open spaces for people to live with their peers and get to interact with other people because the city can be so big and lonely, especially to people who've just moved here. So she wanted to make sure I was okay with living here. And I can appreciate that.
But it's still confusing.
The director said she didn't want me to be isolated, and wanted me to have friends. And I didn't tell her I did have friends all over the world, even in Finland. Just because I talk to most of my friends through my computer doesn't mean I'm isolated. She said that even though there's a lot of people in the city, it's easy to be lonely. Which is, oddly, exactly the problem I've got right now. The people here - they aren't my peers. They're not the sort of people I'd have made friends with back in school, in any school. Kindergarten all the way through grad. I can be friendly with just about all of them, but once I'm gone from here, I won't want to keep track of them. They're not the sort of person I'd want to keep track of, or stay in touch with.
In some ways, I'm more isolated from living with a lot of people I don't really fit in with, than if I was living in my own space and could make more choices about my social interactions.
I explained to the director that a lot of trouble with the other girls came from communication barriers, and in not being able to break those down. The metaphor I used was that it felt like I was speaking German and the rest of them were using Cantonese. It's clearly language and verbal speech, but there's no way to communicate directly. Which I suppose is why I'm in this situation right now.
I've tried speaking to them, and I've tried explaining to them why their methods of communication are so difficult for me to decipher, and they keep on with what they've always been doing, never minding what I've said or tried. And it's strange, given that I spend so much energy trying to meet other people at a halfway point, figuring out the right thing to say and sound effortless the way other people do - it doesn't seem quite right that no one else makes any effort when they speak.