Journal #24

In class today the discussion got me thinking about what might really happen while I am in the field. Generally it is easy to just think about the overall idea of going to a foreign country and not necessarily what problems can occur or what might take place during that time. For example, I really have no idea how I am going to get from the airport to my home; at first thought I just lazily said that it "will all work out and I won't worry about it now". Although there is truth to that statement, I have not been taking into consideration the fact that I don't know the language fluently, I don' t know how to exchange the money, and I don't know how far it is from one city to another. These things could make it a lot more difficult trying to get to my city. But if I take time to ask and research the best way to get from the airport to Coimbatore before I get there life will be a lot easier when something unexpected happens (e.g. the train leaves without me). Even though we can't be completely "prepared" we can still gain more knowledge about where we are going. And in addition to that knowledge it is important to be flexible like Ashley taught. I remember when I was in Chile so many unexpected things happened to us on a daily basis that if we weren't flexible we would not have had a good time. For example, I remember one time we were trying to go into Argentina on a trip and had to take a bus to Santiago (about 3 hours from where we were staying) and then switch buses to go to Argentina. Unfortunately we forgot the temporary visa that they gave us at the airport that was needed to leave and enter the country (...yeah I know, that's kind of embarressing to admit). Although we could speak spanish at a conversational level, it was still very difficult to navigate finding a bus that would take us back to our house before all the local transportation stopped and before it was too dangerous to be traveling. Luckily everyone in my group was fairly level-headed so we were able to work together and make it back without a problem. Had we not known about the local transportation in addition to being calm/flexible and not freaking out, we would have had a much harder time. So even though I do not know everything about where I am going or the challenges that I will run into, I still want to think about the fears that I have and do my best to answer them now that way I will be better equiped to handle the stressful situation when it arises.