Re-emerging Into Reality

You may have noticed that I have been somewhat less diligent about posting in this month of November.  That is because I have been participating in a cult group madness challenge called NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month.  50,000 words.  30 days.  One writer.

Okay, not one writer.  That is what is so wonderful about NaNo.  Writing is by nature a solitary activity, and sitting in a group of people all absorbed in their own laptops writing their own novels does not sound like a party by anyone's standards.  Still, it is a great way to stay motivated.  I tend to write in creative spurts, but I have a hard time finishing.  I get about half or two-thids of the way through, and the story starts to sag, and I start to see all the places I went wrong, and I want to start over and fix things.  And I get to a point where I don't know where to go next and I don't really care.

But with NaNoWriMo, every word counts.  Rule #1 is DO NOT DELETE.  Rule #2 is DO NOT GIVE UP.  I was up to being seven days behind, but I made up the difference in the last few weeks and pulled across the finish line with hours to spare.

I have done NaNo several times in the past, and this was a year of firsts for me.  It was the first year I made an outline the night before from a story I thought of that day.  It was the first time I threw out that outline on the first day and started with a story that had been smoldering in my head for a while.  And it is the first year that I re-started on the second day with a completely new story that had been gestating but I had not considered ready to be born; but it was my most viable option.  It is the first year I had no idea where the story was supposed to go.

That is another thing about NaNo.  It forces you to be creative.  For the first 20k or so I was writing myself in circles.  Then I added witch hunters.  I never thought I would until I realized that I needed something new.  And there they were.  That got me close to 40k before that arc came down.  The rest was a first person account filling in the gaps of the first arc.  Note:  First person in lovely for wordiness.  You can throw in so much opinionation and asides and rants.  It's wonderful.

Then I was still about a thousand short and spat out half a bonus scene with the witch hunters.

Every year after that first one I have told myself that I won't do NaNo - I don't have time, I don't any good ideas, I'm in the middle of another project - and yet somehow I always do.  And I don't regret it.  Any of it.  Even though all my drafts so far have been shit, and I don't very much think this one is any different, I wrote that damn novel.  I have proven to myself that I can can overcome my creative barriers.  It does not take skill to write, after all.  Skill can be learned.  It takes determination and persistence, and I definitely leveled up in that area this month.

Now for a rest. This is also the first year my wrist actually started twinging (at the 47k mark, when I was starting to think I might actually make it).  That has not stopped me from starting a new crochet project.  I want to get back to my translations - I've been making trips to the career center to see what the heck I can do with my life, and translator is still one of my options.  I also want to start reading books again.  Am halfway through the third Temeraire book and also for some reason have a strong urge to re-read the entire Chronicles of Chrestomanci.  Oh yeah, finals are coming up too.

Blah blah words blah oh wait, I don't have to count them anymore.

The Calm After The Storm

FFF.

Fuckin' Folk Fair.

What is Folk Fair?  For those of you who don't know, it is a large culture fair that takes over one of the academic buildings on campus.  Every cultural organization (and then some) gets a room or a table to put up an informational display about their country.  And sell food.  Seriously, people only really come for the food.

This year was particularly exciting because FFF fell on Halloween weekend, which is really weird timing, and also because none of us had ever planned a FFF before.  Nor did any of us live off campus and have a nice private kitchen and a grown-up refrigerator.  Fridge stuffed full of butter.  The worst part is that we grossly overestimated how much we needed.  We would have been more than okay with half the amount.  Fuckin' butter.

It's for cheesecake.  German cheesecake, that I should be allowed near because I ended up destroying two when taking them out of the pans and making one that did not get cooked all the way through (which really wasn't my fault, but I still had a hand in making it).  It is an absolute bitch to make, but after the first bite, you suddenly remember why we go through all this trouble every year for that damn cheesecake, because it is so freakin' good.

And it's over.  One more year done.  I swear I will never do it again, at the same time knowing that I will in fact get suckered into it.  But at least I have another ten months to relax and not think about it.  I can focus on distributing the gear to the fencing team, which shouldn't be too hard except that one girl is MIA and I'm starting to get a little worried.  Then I have to get the team to a tournament, which would be a lot easier if I knew how many were going, but they have not responded to at least a dozen emails.  Like herding canaries.

I have an exam on Monday, and an exam on Tuesday, and a research paper I should probably get started on, I still have no idea what I'm going to do for NaNoWriMo, and I'm likely going to catch my roommate's cold tomorrow.  Yeah.  Now that FFF is done, I can totally relax.  At least I don't have to bake anything.

The Beginning of the End

I have just spent the last five months studying in Germany.  And there you go, gushing about how jealous you are, and how it was the time of my life, and did I do a ton of travelling, and my German must be so much better now.  No. 

This semester has been the worst five months of my life, but I am through bitching about it.  I am not allowed to think about wasted time.  I am going to make this into a positive experience. Somehow.

Things I learned in Germany:

1.  German is not cool when everyone speaks it.
2.  Only Americans think German is cool.
3.  I still do not like being a tourist.
4.  It is no easier making friends abroad than at home.
5.  I have not left high school behind me as thoroughly as I thought.
6.  It sucks when people die.
7.  Stuffed animals are necessary for psychological well-being.
8.  I need people. 
9.  Written translation work is fun.  Speaking is not.
10.  I have serious psychological issues that will one day need to be dealt with.
11.  Grown-ups are useless.
12.  I like trains.
13.  Cooking is only fun if there is someone to eat with.
14.  I do not like small towns.
15.  I cannot go five months without peanut butter; In fact, I can't go one month.
16. The point of travel is not where you go, but who you're with.
17.  If you leave your cabinet unlocked, expect your bread to be stolen.
18.  The internet is full of things - like the first three seasons of Digimon on youtube. 
19.  Being a foreigner sucks.
20.  I still like anime.
21.  Expecting one event to solve all your problems is a bad idea.
22.  When deciding where to spend a significant portion of one's life, go by more criteria than just what looks pretty.

On Sickness and On Health

Call me crazy, but when one has the leisure to do nothing, plenty of soup, tea, and instant noodles, and internet or television access, being sick can actually be a rather pleasant experience.  Soothing, in fact.  If you are pushing yourself beyond your limits, sooner or later your body will step in and say:  Enough is enough.  You need to take a break.  And it will impose idleness on you through a complete lack of will to do anything productive.

I find it quite unfair that in our society, taking a day off because of stress is frowned upon, unless there is a tangible emergency or if one is physically ill.  After all, if one can be physically ill for a few days, but get better after lots of rest and fluids, why can't one be mentally ill for a few days and take a few days off to get over that?  I suppose it comes down to American (or perhaps not exclusively American) cynicism - if you claim to be depressed, you mght be faking, but if you claim to have a cold, I can see the snot coming out of your nose.  Also, it's contagious, and you are not wanted in your workplace or school.

Honestly, if not for the fact that I was sick, spending a day eating instant noodles and watching old cartoons would make me bored out of my mind.  I would also feel guilty about doing that instead of something productive like reading the book for my class, or writing one of the papers, or planning what I'm going to do next semester/the rest of my life.

When you come right down to it, sickness is justified misery, and I find the worst part of misery is the guilt.  People in my situations simply are not allowed to be miserable.

On a last note, being sick makes you appreciate being healthy and being able to function.  This earthly flesh is in fact a delicate instrument, and one needs to take care of it.  It could so easily go wrong.  But it hasn't.  This is probably the easiest problem to solve in anyone's life.  You know what to do, and it works every time. 

Appreciate the simple problems in life.

Scheisse! - Ich bin eine Ausländerin.

It is difficult to be a foreigner.  If I have gained one useful thing from this whole experience, I will at least have a better understanding of non-native English speakers in America.

I am one of those people for whom looking stupid is one of the worst fates in the world.  I am terribly self-conscious about my speaking when I am around real Germans.  I know I screw up just about every ending, and that my vocabulary is not that great, and don't get me started on my accent.  However, I take offense when people assume that because I am from America, I am at a certain level of German.  That is to say, not able to pass the DSH 2 exam that allows me to study like a regular student at a German university.  Which I have.  Yes, I'm bragging; I think I deserve it.

I can write very well in German.  I also read German books.  The problem is, that doesn't show when you talk.  People only judge your language proficiency by speech.  Worse, mental capacity is often judged based on oratorial proficiency.  So for instance, if you attempt to make a joke/pun/play on words/clever converstaion piece that worked last week, you might end up with a German kindly explaining a grammar rule to you. 

I do not need the Germans to explain their language to me, considering that I am the one who has made a study of the grammar and rules and probably know the mechanics better than most native speakers.  I need experience.  I need to decipher the Hessian accent, and function in the back-and-forth of normal conversation.  I need to get the courage to make mistakes in front of native speakers, and the reassurance that at least I am understood.  If I need something explained, I will ask - and please explain in German.  Do not immediately grope after the English translation.  I am not some kind of linguistic invalid that needs to be coddled.

The point is:  When confronted by a non-native speaker of your native language, handle yourself thus:
1)  Ignore mistakes, unless you really cannot understand.
2)  If I ask you what you mean, repeat what you said just a little bit slower and clearer.  There are some things the classroom does not prepare one for.  Like regional accents and normal conversation.
3)  If I want a word clarified, look for synonyms or explanations in your language.  Don't fall back on translation.
4)  Assume that I know all the grammar theory already.
5)  Tell me I speak well, or have a good accent, or something.  Even if it's a lie.  I like the reassurance.  And I'm not going to believe you, even if you are telling the truth, so you may as well lie.
6)  Do not patronize.  I can think, you know.  In fact, many people consider me smart.  If you get over the fact that I am a non-native speaker and actually got to know me, you would find out that I have a whole lifetime of experiences, some of which might even be interesting.  A foreigner is not a tabula rasa.
7)  And remember:  My English is better than yours.

Because I am handling a language that is not native to me, I lack the shading and inflection that comes naturally to you. That does not mean I lack emotion or opinion.  Because I have a hard time expressing myself, that does not mean that there is nothing going on inside me.  Seriously people - don't judge.  This is a case of putting yourself in someone else's shoes.  Personally, I think everyone needs to experience being a stupid foreigner (being a tourist doesn't count; you're already stupid) at least once in their life.