Why People Change

Today (June 16) is the last day of my internship. I'm glad that I finished my final presentation. I did it in German language and the audience seemed enjoyed it very much which means they could understand what I was talking about. When it comes to 'Fragen aus Publikum' session, there was a question coming from the audience: "Tell us your bad experience in Germany?" I automatically responded, "Language", then it followed by other answers from other trainees. I didn't have the chance to explain it more, well to be precise, my brain didn't perform properly to arrange words to say but I feel like I have reasons why my lips said that. However, looking back at the past 6 months, it's amazing how far I have changed now.

When I arrived in Germany, I was the minority. I came with the old-traditional-Eastern mindset. Being minority is difficult because, as a human, I need to build social interaction. To interact with people, I need to understand what they're thinking and saying. But there's a huge boulder in between which called 'Language'. How could I communicate with people if cannot understand their language? Though I could just use English, but not all people here could speak English well. Moreover, thinking in English and thinking in German are totally different things. There are many words in German that cannot be easily translated into English. To think in German, I had to understand the context. To get the context, I need examples, elaboration, perception and repetition, and it takes time. So, learning the language was my primary concerns since the first day I arrived here.

Then I went to Volkshochschule for German course. I liked it very much because I get to know my classmates who come from many different countries. They come from Poland, Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian, Iran, USA, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Ecuador, China, and Thailand. Even the teacher also come from Poland, so there's no German people at all in the class but we had to speak German! We spent good times together, like having dinner at restaurant and BBQ-ing in springtime. From them I learned that they also had difficulties in perceiving German way of thinking. Not all of European people could understand German people! I once met a couple, the husband is from England and the wife from Romanian, and we had interesting discussions about the Germans, like why Germans love drinking beers and what makes it different from the British, French, and Italian. Although they are 'Western', they also need time to think like Germans.

While struggling in learning the language, I'm slowly learning the Germans habit from daily life experience. For example like giving greetings every morning, lunch, and after-office-hours time, holding the doors for other people, paying attention when people talk, being punctual and always value the time. These new habits gradually replacing the old ones. It was hard at the beginning because old habits die hard. But then I realized it doesn't make sense to keep it as I'm the minority here. I need to be accepted by the society. There are always mixed feelings in setting new behavior. I often ask myself, "Did I do it right? Have I done something wrong? Do people around me like me?" Then I came up to conclusion that these are parts of learning. It's always started with disbelief, like questioning "Why would people do that?" then followed by reasoning, accepting, and eventually forming the new mindset.

I am not the same person as I used to be six months ago. I'm grateful that now I have broader and richer perspectives and I'm still learning. I realize when it's time to return to Indonesia, I would become the minority as well as I'm no longer having the same way of thinking. People might notice and say, "Hey, you've changed!" and I would answer, "Yes, I've learned along the way to what I've become now!"