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Hello there lovely viewers today I would like to share with you a story from my exchange.
Before I went on exchange we had a sort of induction preparation sort of session and
we were talking about how there's gonna be cultural differences in the country that we're
going to and how we might not understand things about them and they might not understand things
about us and sometimes you won't get a chance to explain it and you just have to accept
that things are a certain way. And sometimes this can lead to embarrassing situations,
especially when you don't understand the language that someone is speaking. Exhibit A.
So I was riding my bike and I was riding down the hill from where our student accommodation
was and I was carrying a ball gown in a sort of zip up plastic things that you use to protect
them and it also had a bra in there and I'd borrowed a bra from one of the girls at my
student nation, because I didn't have a strapless bra so I borrowed that and I borrowed the
dress and I was riding along and some guy was walking past me and said something in
Swedish and I didn't know what he said but I figured I'd dropped something and I also
had my bag so I sort of thought I'd probably just dropped my bag or I'd dropped something
like that. I'd actually dropped the bra, the guy walks over, sees what it is looks at it
looks up at me with this mortified face and just walks off but before he walks off he
says something to me in Swedish. I don't know what he said, whether he said, "why is your
underwear falling off?" he could've said anything. He could've said "Well have a good night then,
I think you lost your bra." Normally I would've been mortified but I actually just found it
so hilarious that I was just after he walked off I was just chuckling to myself so much
and it was really funny. And I think that's something that I learnt on exchange was how
to see the funny side of things and not be mortified or embarrassed. I mean surely you
can be mortified, you can be a bit embarrassed but you learn how to laugh at yourself. And it's an important skill to learn to laugh at yourself. One
time I went in to my choir practice and everyone was speaking Swedish, I arrived a bit late
so no one noticed that I was there and they knew that I didn't really understand Swedish
very well but I just, I felt really embarrassed so I didn't want to tell anyone and I just
kind of went with it and I was like I've been in a choir before I kind of know what's going
on, it'll be alright. And then I saw someone across the room and they put their hand up
and said "I think we should be speaking in English" because they caught my eye and knew
that I didn't understand Swedish very well. And the guy that ran the choir actually stopped
and said "Do we need to speak English? Does anyone need us to speak English?" And I just
sat there I didn't say anything, I was like, "you know what, it'll be fine, just let this
blow over." And I just kind of thought, you know what I'll just throw myself in there
hopefully I'll understand most of what's going on and I mean it wasn't like I was in a life
or death situation, so it didn't matter whether I understood all the time what was going on
and I think that was a good way to learn things I mean I'd had to say, okay when they were
announcing things about like next week and what you had to bring and stuff like that
I definitely asked them to speak English but for the rest of the time I could really understand
what they were saying for the most part. So I guess you have to just learn that you don't
have to understand what's going on all the time. One of the things that I learnt from
being in Sweden was to be more confident and to just, to go with the flow, to just be like
you know what I don't understand exactly what's going on but that's okay and I think that's
an important lesson to learn in life. So I guess the moral of this story is keep calm
and act like you know what you're doing because you don't always have to know what's going
on and learn to laugh at yourself. See you later guys :)