G

Last year I went to Romania and studied there for a month. Afterwards I spent some time with my family who lives there. I was staying in a city far away from them so I didn’t see them until the end of the trip. When I first got there after 2 flights (about 12 hours of traveling) my dad’s cousin drove me to the train station. He said that we would meet at kilometer 0 and I was really confused at first. The ride was 4 ish hours and I was with an older couple in a little cabin. I didn’t really talk to them and I slept a lot. I was so curious what they thought about me and they barely talked. I got there and stumbled my way with two suitcases to my hotel. Tiny boutique hotel. In the last week the waiter at the restaurant hotel that I got vouchers to asked me why I was there and when I told him to study Romanian language and he was like why haven’t you been speaking Romanian. I would watch love island when I ate there. I saw lots of tourists since my hotel was in a town square next to the almost 600 year old church. One girl was reading a Tao Lin book and I wondered if she was traveling alone. When I saw my family at the end I felt like I could understand so much more. I’m a pretty quiet person in school settings and when I don’t know people, so learning to speak Romanian for me was really hard.