The Language Barrier

For those of you who are great with the opposite gender, read no further, you won't understand what I am talking about.

Does anyone else have a hard time talking with someone that they find attractive? Be it a guy or a girl, I think that many of us would agree that it can be difficult to find the right words to say to that special someone. You want them to like you, and you don't want them to have a opinion of you. The problem is that you don't know what they like or dislike, you don't know what subjects you can discuss to impress them, and you might even be a little bit afraid to try and find out. At least, that is true for me sometimes. If you can imagine the helpless feeling of not knowing what is okay to talk about and what might upset them, then you might have some idea of the language barrier I am facing.

At this point in time, I speak little to no Russian. I am trying to learn, but that does not mean that I can communicate yet. In a way similar to talking to a beautiful woman, everyone I meet has me speechless. I don't know how much English they might understand. Worse than talking to a beautiful woman in English and not knowing what to say is talking to ANYONE here that only speaks Russian. I want so desperately to have a conversation with them, to get to know them, to see how their day was. But, just like the beautiful woman, I am left standing in the middle of the room, awkwardly trying to find something, anything to say that they might understand.

There is good news, however, in that there are some English speakers here. They communicate with me and I with them. Because of them I do not feel utterly alone, which is good.