Actions Speak Louder

So after reading my post about the Fourth of July, my mother commented on how nice my labmates were. "You have no idea," I told her, and I prepared to write this post.

What follows is an example of how nice my labmates are. Because they are possibly the nicest people I've ever met in the entire world. A post of this nature has been a long time in coming, but something happened this week that blew my mind.

My phone did weird things last week. And by weird things, I mean that it ate 15EUR in 24 hours and promptly stopped working. I had already been having some trouble with it, and this was the straw that broke the camel's back. I told the other Albino Squirrels that I was considering ditching the phone for the remainder of the trip, and I wasn't entirely kidding.

Wednesday was the day that the phone guzzled my money. I was running my first personal experiment and stopped by my office during a break. "Your phone is making noises," The Jedi and The Host of Midsummer informed me. "We are not bothered, but you may need to answer."

I turned my ringer off--I'd been receiving Facebook notifications thanks to the wi-fi--and told them that no one was texting me as my phone was dead after having eaten all my money. I was more or less just making conversation. "You should go talk to the people at the store," said The Jedi.

This idea had already been considered by me, but the circumstances surrounding my phone difficulties were far too complex for me to dream about managing in German. "I can't. I can't explain this in German. And there aren't people at the place that speak enough English."

"Call them? Google the problem?"

"It's a German company, and I don't know how I'd Google this in German." I was trying not to be whiny, because I can be whiny when it comes to my inability to comprehend German. "I think I'm just going to buy a new SIM card--"

"No, Melody," said The Jedi, "this is not okay. It shouldn't just take all that money. We need to fix this."

Some quick background on The Jedi: he's busy. True, The Professor is busier, but I sit next to The Jedi, and I've seen how busy he is. People pop in every quarter hour to ask him questions.When the phone rings, it's always for him. He also spends time at another lab on campus. Not to mention the endless meetings he joins in the conference room. I'm not the only one aware of how busy he is. "Sometimes I feel guilty when I have to ask him a question," The Host of Midsummer told me once. And they're friends.

Established: The Jedi is busy.

And what did he do when informed of my phone predicament? He researched online for a good fifteen minutes. He tried several different numbers, not all of which worked. He finally reached a real person, asked her if she spoke English, then spent almost ten minutes on the phone with her when she didn't. He scribbled down notes and asked questions and made points.

I sat in my office chair and almost cried. I have never in my life been so overwhelmed by kindness. My lack of knowledge of German has put me in so many humbling positions in my time here, but this was the most beautiful. The Jedi is the busiest person in EP6 {besides The Professor}. He took time out of his super busy schedule--a whole half-hour, I think it turned out to be--to do something for me that I couldn't do myself no matter how hard I would have tried. He navigated customer service--for me. I had nothing to offer, not even to the lab {I'm an undergraduate here for three months, come on, seriously}. And he just did it.

Not only that, but he got me my 15EUR back.

I thanked him more than once. He shrugged it off and informed me that he hoped someone would do the same for him if he were in a foreign country.

It is so humbling to be given something you cannot ever pay for or return. To be completely helpless and have someone step in and do something you couldn't possibly manage yourself--it's beautiful. Being in Germany has given me several opportunities for these kinds of experiences, but this is so far my favorite.

I was glancing through my journal as I finished this post, and I found something I'd scribbled down after The Creator of National Cake Day offered me a chair soon after my time at EP6 began. It meant a lot to me at the time because I was feeling very alone and unobserved since I couldn't participate in any German conversations. When he silently went and brought me a chair as we observed an experiment, I felt like my existence had been acknowledged. Actions speak louder than words, I wrote about the incident, especially German ones.

I may feel occasionally alone due to the language difference, but this day beyond proved that I am welcomed and loved and appreciated by EP6.

Like I said, my labmates are nice.