Adapting to new environments is something I’ve become accustomed to doing in the past decade. Compared to “Joe Smith”, I’ve been travelling quite a bit, and I’ve made it a goal to travel to one new city or country every year.

Every time I’ve visited somewhere new, that sense of not belonging and feeling like an outsider lingered. Sometimes it lasts a few days, sometimes a few weeks. And sometimes that feeling never goes away.

In Summer 2014 I was in Romania on a short internship program for 8 weeks, and there was a point where feeling like an outsider became permanent.

Not being able to communicate with the locals was the reason why I felt that way.

I was with a group of interns, all from around the world, and our inability to speak the local language made us feel…uncomfortable. We never felt like we could offer enough value to the people around us, but we did what we can in that we spoke to the ones that could understand us.

There is a certain level of basic human connection that we can feel when communicating with pretty much anyone. But if we can’t communicate verbally, there is this extra layer of connection that we just can’t feel without speaking to one another. We can’t listen to people’s stories, hear about their past, and be inspired by their ambitions. Although we can hear their tone, we don’t know what type of words they’re using, and the weight that each word may carry.

Times like these can make us feel like outsiders, but the beauty of this particular situation was that we all felt like outsiders. All 30 of us.

After a month of being in Romania, being an outsider stopped becoming something I struggled against – I learned to accept it. I accepted that we just weren’t part of this country, and that my incapability of speaking the language has turned me into an outsider. And that’s okay.

It’s like how suffering by yourself sucks, but suffering with friends…is actually kinda funny.

You can follow me @Marwanalshafei where I spark rainbows within people’s subconscious and make the world go round n’ round.