The Exit, it’s Here?

Can’t blame him, he’s, a first-timer, pushing through that EMERGENCY EXIT door! Translated…

During the starting years of my husband’s going to the State to earn his degree, we were faced with the differences of culture and environment, there was that nervous tension, also the feelings of being refreshed in our daily living. The refreshing feel, was from being in a new country, and there’s another reason, that made the nervousness grow.

On the day of my husband’s freshmen orientation, we’d turned all around inside the buildings, we’d become, dizzy, and couldn’t find the place. As we’re about to be late, he thought, that since we couldn’t find our way from the inside of the building, we should, go outside, and enter again, maybe, it would be easier, for us, to find the room! Not far off, there was, an EXIT sign, my husband was glad, as he’d pushed that door out, ready, to end all of this.

But, the moment he’d pushed open that heavy door, the alarms started sounding off. As we were still wondering, what just happened, there were the hastened footsteps that came, two security officers rushed toward him and asked, “What happened?”, it’d made my husband flustered, and told them that he’d wanted to know what just happened, why are the security officers rushing toward him.

Turns out, this EXIT wasn’t just a way out of the building, it’s an emergency exit for the entire building too. We just arrived to the U.S., and we only learned that EXIT meant “a way to the outside”, the EXIT used here, should’ve been a EMERGENCY EXIT, we’d not known there was an alarm on the door, that it would start going off. Simply stated, as my husband pushed open the door, he’d, accidentally, set off the alarm, and sent out this signal of alert, so no wonder the security officers were on guard.

Finally, we’d sorted this out with the officers, and the two security guards were empathizing with this foreign first years student, who couldn’t make his way out of this labyrinth, and were kindly enough, and “escorted” him to the freshmen training…and, the room full of professors and students watched an Asian student, getting taken in by two HUGE campus security, was that embarrassing or what?

And so, this, is when you’d first arrived to a foreign country, and not understood how things worked, and, I’m sure, that as it’d happened, you and your husband were both, very scared, but, after awhile, when you’d looked back, you two would probably laugh about it, and find it amusing, how the cultures are different…