Letters to the Editor
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ask for help!
i studied in europe as a foreign student for five years. i lived in two different cities in the same country and my experience in each city was completely different. So it might be where you are that's the problem.
but when you write that the culture isn't all that different from home, that sets off alarm bells for me. every european country, even england, is VERY different from the us, but because american pop culture has conquered the world, the differences are driven somewhat underground. it takes a long time, sometimes years, to see these differences, and then, once you see them, you can make changes in your behavior that make it easier for you to make friends and be a part of things. but you have to be ready to SEE.
it sounds to me like you're suffering from the same ugly americanness that i suffered from for at least a year after moving abroad. yes, it took me a year to realize just how different the culture was, and a year to start making friends.
maybe you can jump-start the process. i'm sure your study abroad program hosts mixers between foreign and native students. you should take full advantage of these. a lot of the native students who attend these things tend to be geeky and intense, but that's to your benefit. talk to them. tell them directly what your experience has been and ask them if you've been doing something wrong. once you've engaged them with your problem, ask them if they can take you somewhere where you can watch the locals in the wild, and try out their advice first hand.
you should also be striking up conversations with your classmates before and after classes ... assuming you're taking any classes with native students. are you? if so, talk to them about what you're learning in class. europeans as a general rule are much less anti-intellectual than americans, and they'll be more willing to talk about school than american students.
if you aren't taking classes with european students, do this: get a clipboard, some paper and a pen, and go to the quad, or the cafeteria, or wherever the native students hang out. go visit tables where different groups of students are hanging out and tell them that you're a foreign student from the usa and are conducting a private study, just out of personal curiosity, on ... something. pick something that interests you. sex habits of european students compared to americans. do they cheat more often on their partners?
or how much money do european students have to pay for their education? do they have to go into debt like american students do? what kind of pets did they grow up with and how do they feel about vegetarianism? pick a topic that's a bit provocative, and that will lead to conversations about difference. be prepared to explain about americans. take notes.
better yet, pick a topic about people's behavior in social situations, and then, after a thorough discussion, ask if anyone can take you somewhere to see this stuff in action. if you've handled it right, you probably won't even need to ask.
it's brazen, doing stuff like this. but then, studying abroad is pretty brazen too. don't go half-assed on brazenness. go all the way. this is what you're there to do: not study coursework, but study people.
good luck and have fun with your silly, brazen self!
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Dreams vs Reality
Sounds to me like one thing that's happening, LW, is that you had a mental image of what this semester abroad would be like, and it's different than your plan. Maybe you had fantasies (of course you had fantasies!) of what it would be like, and now it isn't like that. So you got frozen in front of the TV. It happens.
Something similar happened to me, on a year overseas. I had such wonderful dreams about it -- and the reality was not anything close to those dreams.
Cary's advice is excellent. The thing I'd add to it is to suggest that perhaps part of what's going on with you is a bit of grief over the big plans you had that aren't turning out quite as planned.
Are you eating right? Getting enough exercise? Simply getting out there and walking will be good for you, and if you are spending so much time with the TV, you are probably not getting enough exercise. Explore. Get lost and found again. Ask for directions.
The people who wound up being friends my year overseas were an odd assortment. My local corner store guy was my vocabulary tutor for all things food. I asked him the names of things, and he told me. We made little conversations. Eventually I had a friend. Same with the folks at the coffee shop where I was a regular. I didn't find love, or people with whom I would be lifelong friends, but the small connections were golden.
Not what I expected. But the experience of a lifetime nonetheless.
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get a life
Studying abroad is the deepest, dunnest dungeon of the college existence. it would have been better if you just went to Rekal and had the generic memories implanted in you to spare yourself the hassle of actually going. Other cultures are exciting and they're not, meaning that there is very little exotic about leading a pedestrian life in Europe, even while Europe itself can be breathtaking in its grandeur, history, and engrained sensibility. But such pleasures are often internal, and are usually unavailable on the manufactured carousel ride study abroad offers. Unfortunately, the biking riding, italian tight jeans lover fantasy all 20 year olds expect only befalls the random, attractive, naive girl. The successful study abroad experience demands that you accede to the self-aggrandizing notion that you will simply "consume" another culture for a semester, that your life will be "enriched", that you can be assured that you will return home with monotonous stories about how your host mother only had two dresses but they were such beautiful dresses, and that your parents have pride in the fact that they paid 25K to your college for you to enroll in a 3K program in some Eastern European gulag. Chin, up; it was "worth it."
But wait, you aren't getting the right experiences. Did you take a Let's Go or Lonely Planet with you? Are you meeting "locals" in the bars and cafes? Have you tried taking pictures (even with random people on the street) and posting them to Facebook for godsakes?
The unpleasantness of being isolated in a foreign country and enrolled in meaningless classes will pass. You, however, must keep up the confidence game that this is the best experience of your life. If you do that, IT WILL BE THE BEST EXPERIENCE OF YOUR LIFE. That is the solution to your problem. You need to fake it, leave intriguing and ambiguous status updates on your gchat, and watch TV until it all melts gloriously away and you return to the land of great water pressure and people you actually know. In a world which values the idea of studying abroad as a rite of passage, you simply need to proclaim that you had a life changing experience studying abroad and you will be fine. In time, you will even truly believe it yourself.
Like a hot summer's day on the Serengeti, study abroad is viscerally unpleasant. Just get through it however you can. Take inward pride, at the very least, that you didn't end up making friends with a bunch of losers who go to lower ranked colleges and who you would have been forced to correspond with once you returned to a place where there are actually people you like.