I’m in the middle of my forth week in Poland. I get little cultural shocks everyday but I keep on remembering some stuff from my preparation for becoming a cultural sensitivity trainer. That what we’ll find different in another side of the world is not good or bad, normal or completely absurd, is just different and probably normal for the country and people among which you are.
The one thing that I strikes me most of the days is the English issue so let me just tell some stuff about this topic.
There are not so many people speaking English, as I was expecting from a EU country. It’s very seldom to find somebody who speaks English in shops, supermarkets, banks, train, on the street. Let’s just say it was not very hard to accept this.
The other day we went in a language school office to ask for some information regarding a polish for foreigners course we found on their site (also just in Polish). Shock: the girl over there spoke English so badly, we couldn’t believe our ears. Just greetings, sorry, no, I don’t know and that was about it.
When being in a train, getting a fine for having a student ticket, the conductor tried to find somebody who spoke English to help him. There was nobody who spoke English in the whole wagon (around 45 people). Cool, isn’t it?
At my work people know English but use Polish so we decided to answer in Romanian whenever they speak Polish. That’s how we arose their interest in learning Romanian. Today was their first lesson: the Romanian greetings. It was funny seeing them how the made their best to pronounce “Bună seara!” and not „Buna sera!”.
Tomorrow we’ll teach them the numbers!:)
(For more cultural shocks visit Living Diversity!!! - Romanian SN's blog;)
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