Chicken.

I am such a chicken when it comes to doing things that I am not sure I can do perfectly. I hate failing at things. Yes, I understand this is a character flaw ... I am working on it.

I cannot decide if Russian brings out the worst of this in me or if in some deranged way it is helping to cure me. What I do know is that today I failed at overcoming.

I was sitting at lunch with a group of women I do not normally sit with; I knew that three of the five did not speak English at all and I was not sure about the other two. For a while, I was content to sit and eat lunch without saying a word. As lunch was winding down the table began to clear out ... I was left sitting with one girl. I had been introduced to her sometime ago, but of course I could not remember her name (as I type this I remember her name, geez ... a little late). We sat there finishing up lunch in complete silence. It was not that I did not want to talk to her - I just had no idea how to say "I am sorry, I know we have been introduced, but I cannot remember what your name is. I am Susanna, you are?" I knew how to tell her what my name was, but it takes a lot of extra hand gestures to go from me giving you unsolicited information about myself to you giving me information about yourself without speaking the same language. So I just sat there - eating. Eating and going over and over in my head how I would say things to her - you know - if I were brave enough to just try to talk to her. I then moved on to arguing with myself about actually talking to her. I could have asked if she spoke English, but I did not want her to assume that I was not willing to speak Russian or that I somehow thought English was better. I could have asked how she was, but then what would I do if she did not speak English? It is amazing how many justifications I can come up with for not talking to someone when all I really want is to talk to them.

In the end, she finished her lunch and I finished mine. We cleared our dishes to the kitchen and parted ways. I could not even bring myself to interject a "good-bye" because at that point I was simply ashamed at my lack of ability to speak Russian and my failure to even try.