There is something quite different and funny "going around" this semester: international conversations... Last semester, almost all of the exchange students were from Turkey and we used to speak English with all friends. Now that we have exchange students from Spain and Belgium and we have been exposed to Danish for six months, you can hear many different languages being spoken around since almost everyone tries to learn some words or expressions in other languages. When we meet with other exchange students, everyone tries to get some words from the other friend's native language because it is fun. For instance, it is likely that you hear "Teşekkür ederim" (Turkish), "Tak!" ( Danish ) and "gracias" (Spanish) or "merci" (French) or "Thank you" at the same time; all of which means the same thing. The same thing goes for many basic words in different languages. And sometimes it is quite confusing but at the same time funny to hear all these.
We had one of these conversations tonight, which made us laugh a lot. Me, Rikke (one of our Danish housemates) and Charline (another exchange student from Belgium) were sitting in the kitchen and playing with cards. Then, Müslüm arrived and we invited him to our game but he said that he was so tired and he needed to go to bed and sleep. Then, each of us said "Good night" but in different languages. Rikke said "Good night" (in English) , Charline said "İyi Geceler" (in Turkish) and I said "Godnat" (in Danish). To our surprise, none of us said it in our own native language. But the funniest thing about this conversation was what Müslüm said next. When we all say "Goodnight" in different languages, he replied in Spanish and said "Buenas Noches". So, since we have already been confused a lot while speaking, apparently we will be confused much more when we go back to our country while speaking with other people and the most difficult thing that we are going to face will probably be "reverse culture shock" ; the language problem.
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