Swanson School of Engineering

Aaron S. – Industrial Engineering

Although I studied Spanish for five years in high school, the Uruguayan dialect is one that I could barely piece together, and only really started to pick up halfway (a week and a half) into the trip. In our group of six Pitt students, one spoke nearly fluently so we did not have too many difficulties communicating with locals. However, that does not mean that I didn’t venture off on my own sometimes, which also would not normally be a cause of concern because at worst case scenario, I could pull up google translate, but being frugal and challenging myself to live in the moment as much as I can, I decided I would not buy a data plan for the trip, so that was no longer a fail safe at my disposal. Not having a data plan created many challenges throughout the program, from shopping and ordering food to following maps without navigation. 

On one of the first few days of the trip I decided to go shopping on my own in between classes. First, I had to get to the mall without using navigation. This was not too difficult because the mall was just down the street, but still stressful because this happened only two days into the trip. After getting to the mall and poking my head into stores to walk right back out again and getting leering looks from shoppers and clerks alike, I finally found a store that had some selection I was interested in. I walked in looking around, and an employee came up to me and I assume asked me if he could help with anything, to which I responded, in the little Spanish I know by saying I don’t speak Spanish very well. So, he let me browse until I found a style I liked and checked out what sizes they had on display. Unfortunately, the measurements were not the same system as what we use in the US. I would ask for a pair to try on, and by this point we had developed a gesture system to communicate to supplement each other’s broken bits of respective foreign languages. I tried on a pair, to find that it was loose in the waist, but fit my leg well. Now came the task of communicating that with the worker. I demonstrated with my hands and used the little language I knew in how to say more, less, large, and small to articulate my assessment from the fitting room to him. Then he came and gave me another pair to try. This process continued for what felt like eight more rounds of giving my assessment on the current pair, him finding me a new pair to try in the fitting room and repeating. Meanwhile, I was the only customer in the store, so all the attention was on me, which meant not only did I have one assistant helping, but I had all eyes on me from the three employees there which just makes the situation much more stressful. Finally, I tried a pair that fit well and I asked for a different color, which luckily, I did know my colors so there were no problems there, and I walked out finally.  

Now feeling more confident after my first pair, I decided to get another one from a different store, and went through a similar process, but not needing to try on nearly as many pairs and picking up a few words from the last exchange it only took a few tries to get a pair that fit well. After conquering that challenge, I don’t think I will ever struggle to buy clothes again, despite the language barrier. My advice to someone going through a similar problem is first, use google translate! If that’s not an option, talking with your hands is a great way to get any message across despite a language barrier. Talking in broken Spanish and even full-on English, can always be accompanied by hand signals to demonstrate your point. This is a skill I’ve used in a few different countries with a few different languages, and to me it’s the best strategy to communicate through a language barrier. 

Looping back to the struggle of navigation without technology, there was one day after class which I wanted to venture off on my own, so I did some research while in the engineering building after class, found a nice coastal lookout area and mapped out where I had to walk to get there on my laptop. I then took a picture of the route and started walking. This exercise tested my sense of direction which I luckily passed and made it to my destination without any hiccups. I did still use the picture of the map on my phone, and that made it easy enough to get around. Fortunately for me, this was not my first experience getting around in an unfamiliar place without navigation, and this time had far lower steaks than when I did the same thing last may in the Swiss Alps. In general, I love to impose mini survivalist challenges on myself so that If I ever were in a dire situation, I would be experienced enough to handle it. Some other common traveling challenges that were not necessarily challenges for me because of my fortunate exposure level to them is planning logistics. Getting all the necessary information needed to book tickets of any kind is hard whether it be a flight, a ferry, or a bus, of which I did all three on this trip.