Sometimes when you are in a foreign country, you have moments where you wonder: How on Earth did I end up here? Sitting in a Croatian television studio with cameras on me amidst booing fans, shooting lasers and incomprehensible arguments, I had just such a moment.

I did have some inkling of how I ended up in that spot. The director of my NGO here in Zagreb was invited to be on a top-rated television show called Piramida, and needed someone to sit behind her for support. Apparently, none of her other friends wanted to appear on the show, but since I was a foreigner she figured I wouldn’t be embarrassed. It seemed as good a reason for my first television debut as any. She explained the format as follows: three contenders face off in a debate on the headline issues of the day. They argue and interrupt each other, and the at-home audience votes for the ‘most convincing’ via text message. At the end of the show, the winner is announced. This was about all I understood as I went into the television studio, armed with only a handful of Croatian words.

We waited for half an hour in the green room where we met the two other debaters — one a short, long-haired theater director with a dotted line tattooed around his neck and the other a former Olympic boxer turned politician who had brought flowers for the women and signed copies of his book on political marketing. When he found out I was from America, he said "America, good! I was in Los Angeles for Olympics and Las Vegas to get married." The hostess came in to shake everyone’s hand. She was a tall, blonde woman in a kelly-green dress and red patent-leather belt with matching shoes.

The hour of filming was something out of a surreal dream: the set was a huge nylon pyramid with colored spotlights shooting all over it, and I sat directly behind my boss as she argued about whether school uniforms should be mandatory, if women can keep secrets and whether people over 40 should be allowed to adopt babies. I had been told beforehand what the topics would be, but was otherwise totally afloat in a sea of Croatian. I had no idea what was being said, and therefore was clueless about when to react, when to smile, when to boo. I took all my cues from those around me, feeling like a lip-reader in the tower of Babel. I was alienated and part of a mass all at the same time, trying hard to clap at the right moment and look indignant when the other contestants spoke– an outsider just pretending to be one of the regular people.

My boss didn’t win in the end (the boxer took the vote), but we both agreed the experience was worth it. She was given a tape of the show that I plan to watch. I want to see if I looked just as confused as I felt, or if I was just another audience member, blending in like a pro.