people who don't get it, revisited

SO. Back in July, I wrote a post expressing my frustration with the people who weren't really understanding--or not trying to understand--my reasoning for moving to Hungary. People out there in cyberspace apparently have experienced this same lack of understanding. Read, if you will, the following "comment" that appeared in my inbox after we posted about Maribor.

**Note, if you want to comment on this blog, the comment has to be "approved" by me first. Normally I don't think anything of the (few, admittedly!) comments that come my way and I just hit 'publish.' But I couldn't just publish this one without forming a rebuttal. So! Here is it.**


yuck has left a new comment on your post "Dober dan!":

"Unlike Szeged, there was awesome shopping":

What would you like to do in Szeged, Hungary, Europe? Work, see life, get experince or shopping?

Unfortunately You-re two tipically, rich, american kids.

Do you pay bills, or go palces and shopping? Because is not the real life!

You can't judge a City, country by the shopping potential.

Appologize for my English! 

There are so many ways for me to attack this that I'm not really sure where to start. I suppose I'll start with the fact that this person, "yuck," doesn't quite speak English. This blog is pretty informal, I think, filled with a lot of slang. If you don't have a solid grasp on the English language, a lot of things that I'm writing about may escape you, comprehension wise. While I'm glad that yuck apologized for his or her English, that doesn't really excuse criticizing something that you may not understand.

Additionally, what would we like to do in "Szeged, Hungary, Europe?" Well. We moved here to work and see life and get experience through travel and relationships with the people. We like to see how they live, what they eat, how they dress, what the grocery stores and drugstores are like--daily life. Part of that, for me anyway, includes shopping. What do people spend their money on here? How much will it cost to eat out at a restaurant? How much will gas set you back, or a monthly bus pass?

This segues nicely into my next point, about being a "tipically rich american kid." Nothing about America is typical. This is something that I try to stress to the kids that I teach, who pretty much all view America as one big episode of "My Super Sweet Sixteen." America is an enormous country. The rich are very rich, the poor are incredibly poor, and then there's everyone else somewhere in the middle. It annoys me that yuck has called me a "tipically rich american" not because I'm not rich, but because yuck seems to think that there is a typical American. Perhaps yuck should put yuck's self out there, move thousands of miles away from yuck's family and friends, and see what the culture is like in another country. I don't universally assume anything about Hungarians, or Europeans, or people from Szeged. It's bullshit.

Everyone approaches life from a different place. Travel does that to you. It forces you to hear what other people assume about you, based on their notions conceived at a very safe distance about your country. We are not our politicians or our music, our movies or our pop culture. We are individuals. More specifically, we are individuals who left the comfort of our homes and being surrounded by people who speak our language to come to a country so different from our own to gain maturity and understanding--to avoid saying anything as sublimely stupid as yuck has said to me. And for the record, yuck, we do pay bills. We worry about our bank accounts and our college loans at home. We are conscious of every single forint that we spend. We stretch ourselves thin so that we can do things like travel through Slovenia and live in Hungary, despite financial problems that we will most definitely have to face when we get home at the end of this experience. We weighed the pros and cons and decided that these experiences are the most important thing to us.

This is "real life" for us, this is our reality. "Real life," by the way, is an extremely subjective term. "Real life" for a child born with AIDS in Africa is probably a little different than "real life" for a professional football player in England, than a business executive in Dubai, than an elementary school teacher in Hungary. But all of those people need to put clothing on their backs. Whether they make it or buy it, having something to wear is a pretty base, essential, "real" human need. Walk into any of my classrooms and ask my middle school students what they like to do in their free time and most assuredly you will hear: Being with my friends, listening to music, going to Szeged Plaza for shopping for clothes. And I mean, we teach over 200 students in tiny villages in this region. All of these kids view wearing clothes to school as part of real life.

Anyone that knows us--the people that we are writing this blog for, by the way, our friends and family--knows that we not typical, we are not rich, and we don't judge anything by its shopping districts. We are quite observant, however, and even our Hungarian friends agree that Szeged's shopping leaves something to be desired. We're not blameless here--we lived in New York, maybe we're a little snobby for it. But don't fucking call us tipical while apologizing for your English. Go learn something about America that you didn't see on TV.