Fremdsprachen

(foreign languages)

As of today, I have been in Germany for 1 month. Though truthfully it feels like less than that. I want to write about languages in this post.

I wish that I had been a better student in elementary/middle/high school. I always just did the bare minimum to scrape by. I never paid attention in classes (with a few exceptions, like Mr. Percival's Astronomy class...) I didn't do homework, and put off projects and papers until the last minute. In my defense, I read a lot of books. But they were mostly science fiction or fantasy books, which somehow is less "legit" than reading Shakespeare or Dickens or Tolstoy. [Though I will never apologize for reading every single Piers Anthony book.]

I wish that I had taken Latin. If I had, I feel like learning German would be a lot easier. I think it is more than a little bit sad that most Americans are monolingual. I have written in the past about my experiences with languages. Pine View tried really hard to get us into languages. I took French there for what must have been 5 years, but don't really remember it. I hear they offer Arabic and Mandarin now, though I have yet to confirm that. I took Japanese over the summer when I was 14, but don't remember that either.

The bottom line is, despite exposure to Russian, French, Spanish, Japanese... I never bothered to see the advantages of knowing foreign languages. I sometimes feel like it is "too late" for me. Considering I started German (which I am determined to master) at the age of 24, I feel like a 3 year old toddler here, who can understand the majority of what I hear but cannot respond in kind. It's getting better though, and I've learned a lot over the past month.

At the moment, I've got friends living in S. Korea, Japan, France, and Ukraine. I know at least one of these people reads this blog consistently. I just wonder how long it really takes to achieve fluency, if it is even possible. I am in class with some people who have been learning German for 7-9 years, and thus feel like I am at a huge disadvantage. I can communicate better than I have ever been able to, but still feel like I am mangling my sentences, or forgetting words that I've learned a thousand times before.

This tone of this entry is beginning to smack of self-pity.

So I've been reading Der Vorleser (a.k.a. The Reader, made into a film w/ Kate Winslet) and it is the first full book that I have attempted to read, and so far I'm understanding most of what is going on. If I stop to look up every unknown word, it takes me 15 minutes to read a page, so I just gloss over and try to glean the meaning from the context. It's pretty exciting to me, though the actual story isn't mind-blowing, that I am even able to read to the level that I can.

Speaking of Pine View, our 10 year reunion (if we're having one?) is next year. I often find myself wondering what has been going on for the past 9 years. I went to college [more than once], I've been in relationships, both serious and less-serious. I've made and lost friends, lived in a few different apartments, worked a few jobs. I wonder if my fellow Classmates of the year 2000 ever feel the same as I do. Though I have seen many of these people since 2000, there are those that I have not seen since the night we graduated. I wonder what those people look like now, and what they are doing.

And now I find myself here, in a city that is currently celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of a wall that divided the city (/country/continent) from 1961-1989. I am still beyond happy to be here. I have a future plan, which I am sure will continually change, but that's alright with me.

I wonder how many people actually read this... If you are a regular reader, you should "follow" this blog so I can know how large my audience truly is. I would probably be inclined to update more often if I knew that people are reading these ramblings.

Nebel der Zukunft

(Fog of the Future)

I really have been meaning to write an entry for some time. I am sorry that I haven't, because I've had a few good ideas that I wanted to write down... but they always fade before I get back to my computer.

I arrived safely in Berlin on Friday the 2nd. With the help of a friend who happened to be in Berlin that weekend, I managed to find my apartment. For those of you who know Berlin at all, I am staying in Mitte. Fischerinsel to be precise. The closest U-Bahn station is Märkisches Museum on the U2-line (2 stops away [or 10 minutes by foot] from Alexanderplatz). There is an Edeka grocery store directly beneath me, in the same building... which is absurdly convenient. Except, of course, on Sundays... when basically everything is closed. I am not sure I will ever fully adjust to this aspect of German society. At least most items can be obtained at kiosks and in major stations, though.

My course began last Tuesday. They placed me into the C1 level, which is where I want to be. The classes are fun, sometimes difficult (if not very difficult) sometimes not. It is a very different experience than the summer program I went to last year. New students come and go each week. And instead of 1 teacher, we have 3 that rotate depending on the day of the week and time of day.

On the first day, they were showing a PowerPoint presentation showing certain highlights of Berlin. Unfortunately, I had already seen all of these things before. It gave me a certain feeling of snobbery, like I was better than those 28 kids who were visiting from Nebraska (no offense Nebraskaners!) even though I have the advantage of being here for the 5th time, as well as 2.5ish years of relatively intense Deutsch in classrooms, both in Florida and here in Germany...

But the Nebraskans stick to themselves. As do the french-speaking kids from Switzerland. It's all very clannish. It kind of reminds me of prison gangs, where everyone keeps with their own kind. So here I am, the miscellanious American from Florida. The only one who has actually finished my college degree, my purpose here is totally different. I am not pursuing credits, I simply need to improve my skills so that I might do well on the all-important TestDaF. I have been informed that the test consists of 4 parts: speaking, listening, reading and writing-- with heavy emphasis placed on the speaking portion. This could prove to be a problem if my German doesn't exponentially improve over the next few months. The test is graded on a 1-5 scale. I need to get a 4 or a 5 to get into the Universität I want to go to (Actually, I haven't decided which of the 2 major Berliner Unis I'd prefer to attend... Needless to say I'm going to apply to them both).

So, I am without a clique or circle of friends, or even a partner in crime or a wingman. I wish that were not the case, but in a way I am also glad. I am getting to know myself [so cliché, i know] pretty well... as is often the case when one is alone most of the time. And more importantly, I am attempting to be okay with being alone. I just prefer surrounding myself with constant mental stimuli, and have found that conversation is the best form of this stimilation.

It does not help that the sun goes down at 3:30pm every day. That is, if it even comes out. Sometimes we just have 6 hours of "graylight" [coined that myself!] per day and no sun. I guess this is just some form of climate-shock... having come from Florida. I am learning to think in metric and other european systems of measure. For example, it warmed up to 0 degrees Celsius this past weekend, up from about -7 during the days.

Even the river is frozen. I took a picture because I couldn't believe it. It was just so hot here last summer. I suppose my problem is that I am not accustomed to seasons. But, I'm glad to be experiencing them now. I think that my appetite has tripled since I got here. I think my body is trying to hibernate. Seriously. I get tired very early.

All in all, I am adjusting well... but still have a ways to go. I still cannot quite believe that I live here. I have not yet obtained my visa, so I hope that I motivate myself to deal with that soon.

I have seen a whole host of very good movies lately: Slumdog Millionaire, The Wrestler, Towelhead and Seven Lives... to name a few.

I miss home in a very abstract way. People will send me messages talking about how they were driving past my old apartment and it made them miss me. Or I will think about my cat and how he is doing. But, these thoughts fade quickly in a fast-paced city like this one.

I think the best advice I can give to myself is to stop seeking self-validation through the approval and affections of others, but instead to seek it within myself. That way, the approval/affection of others would just be an added buttress to my psyche.