31 January 2006

Dangers of Ice
München, Deutschland

So, on my way to linguistics, I slipped on the ice and fell on my ass. It was apparently a pretty impressive crash, as all four limbs and my bag went in different directions and my hat literally flew off my head. I don't really care about the many Germans that witnessed this impressive display of grace, but my back, wrists, and knees hurt a lot from the fall. I'm old. And wahrscheinlich quite uncoordinated.

On top of this, I'm stressed. I'm suffering headaches, loss of vision (when standing up quickly), and my nose is all stuffy. I'm betting on dehydration for all of these. Besides which, I'm just kind of burned out, and I'm blaming most of this on stress. Finals, projects, RA applications, worrying about money, worrying about my living situation next year, worrying about learning this darn language... At least that graceful moment of flying through the air provided a break (albeit a tiny one) from everything else.

25 January 2006

Dream
München, Deutschland

I had a dream last night about languages. I was in my Germanistic linguistics class, and someone asked the teacher (in English) if she was Chilean, as she had said "po" at some point. She replied she was and asked if anyone had been to Chile and, if so, for how long. I explained (in very poor German) that I was a double major and therefor studied for a semester there. People in the class laughed at my German and the teacher asked my neighbor to say something in Spanish. He tried and couldn't say anything understandable, and I wanted to say "See! That's how speaking German is for me!" in Spanish, but it came out choppy, jarbled and incomprehensible and I realized that my Spanish was gone.

This dream could mean a variety of things, most clearly it shows my rapidly declining confidence in the Spanish language, and my fear that I'll lose it. What would that mean? That my 6 months in Chile were a waste? They weren't. Or does it suggest that the same thing will happen to my German after this year? All the frustration and embarrassment... For nothing? I'm terrified of that possibiliy. And why was the class speaking English? Because I'm stuck in English or because German's becoming more natural and easily understandable... I don't know.

Regardless, I'm frustrated with my German. I'm understanding more, writing better, and speaking better. I'm getting a sense of intuition on how the language works, and yet I feel so far apart from native German speakers.