The end of November

Dear Constant Readers,

I'm happy to report that I have internet again in my room, which to me is a big deal. By using the computer at the school, I have begun to become accustomed to the German keypad, and therefore sometimes type a z when I mean a y (they've switched places, but as far as letters go, they are the only ones that have).

A few things that I know now: For me at the moment it's better just to meet people. I don't know how that will change over the course of my year here, but for now, I want only friendships. I've been having much better success with hanging out with the locals, and I've been pleased in general with the improvements in my language skills.

They've set up the Christmas Market here, getting ready for "The Most Wonderful Time of the Yeeeearrr". Actually, I don't mean that sarcastically. I wouldn't say I have a favorite day out of the year, but Christmas would probably be a contender were it the case. I don't know what I'm doing for the holidays, yet. Some friends and I were thinking of putting together a little trip to Switzerland, and I'd like to go. But plans are apparently changing, and the longer we wait, not to mention the longer we plan to stay, the more expensive the trip becomes. I'm a bit torn, now. On the one hand I'd like to go with them and hang out. I'd really like to spend Christmas in Switzerland and see snow and mountains and feel like it's a Christmas that people only ever dream of, something hopelessly romantic like that, because I am a hopeless romantic at heart.

However, I have also been invited to visit a friend and her family, which would also of course be nice. I haven't seen her in 3 years, but every Christmas (except for the last when I wasn't at home) since we met as exchange students in Mexico I've called her to say hi. I would like to also do that.

Financially thinking, I don't want to of course be too cheap to have fun here, but at the same time, I also want to be careful with my money so I can travel to more places or hopefully not need to get a part time job here. If I did that though, so people have suggested being an English tutor/aid, so I could probably handle that if necessary.

Some of the other international students are flying home for the holidays. While I can certainly understand the importance of being with family and friends for that time, I decided before I even left that I wouldn't be coming home for Christmas. For me, when I decided to leave the country for a year, that meant very much not to come back again until that year is up. I figured, I'm in another part of the world, why not take as much in as I can? Certainly to each their own, but that is what my feelings were concerning what I wanted for myself.

At the moment I'm afraid I don't have much more to say. I haven't been getting enough sleep lately, which is something that I can change right now since it's bed time. =D I've heard that college students receive less amount of sleep on average than most other people, at least in America. I can see that's perhaps true. Despite my dislike for nightlife, I'm very much a nightowl and have a hell of a time getting out of bed in the mornings. Twice I almost skipped classes this week, and probably should have for the sake of just being healthy. But I didn't, I felt that if I wasn't going to be self-disciplined about getting to bed at a decent hour, than I would be at least self-disciplined about getting to class.

Tomorrow I can sleep in a bit, and then get some grocery shopping, and so forth done before I have class. I'm looking forward to that.

Once again, I hope this finds you well. I hope to hear back from some of you, and may the beginning of the end of this year be a good one.

I'll fill you in hopefully next week again!

Tristan

Finally a note

Dear Constant Readers,

If you are wondering why I haven't written in a long time, it's because my internet in my room has gone straight to Hades. Originally I thought my computer had contracted a nasty illness, but I found out thankfully that the problem is not in my computer, rather in the piece of crap cable that I've been depending on. However, one problem that my computer has that I cannot seem to resolves is why it's not picking up the wireless signal from my neighbor, while other people's machines can.

In short, I am not forgetting to write, but until this problem is solved, I don't know how constant these messages will be. Hopefully it will be soon, but there's no way to tell for certain.

So, perhaps you are interested in how my life has been these past few weeks. The weather is turning typically German, which means rainy and glumy days.

This past weekend me and 9 other people got away from all of that for a while by taking a weekend trip to Barcelona, Spain. I found Spain, especially from the air, to be very beautiful, and I'm glad I took the trip, because I had formerly no real drive to go to Spain. In the course of the trip I became better friends with a few of the individuals, and it helped that one of them has the same wacky sense of humor that I do.

In the future, though, I think I will want to travel with smaller groups. 10 people is too large, and three days can be a long time to spend with such a number, especially when sleep is low. But the trip was ultimately fun. I saw some of the sights, such as the never-ending-construction of the Sagrada Familia, a big church that won't probably be completed until 2025 or so. Sadly, I didn't get to go up the spires, due to the fact that the line was too long and some people in our group were waiting on us who did want to go up. I also saw the Park Güelle, I think is how it's spelled, Gaudi's park, I think...It overlooks much of the city and also has the world's longest (and very wavy) park bench, which for some reason I wanted to see the whole time. I'm not a fan of Guadi's style of art (specifically, the architecture I should say, since that's what he did). The look to his buildings are certainly original and (to some) beautiful, but to me they look too Dr. Suess-ish (which I also was never a big fan of). That said, the church was quite magnificiant.

But a big trip like that will be few and far between, I'm afraid. It kind of hit my money hard, and I'm starting to get a little concerned about that. I've been trying to save money, but nothing is really cheap. Last night I went out and bought a bunch of soup packets so I don't have to go somewhere else to eat, but still I'm a bit concerned. I suppose I could find a job here, but I'm not sure what that would be. Some of suggested being an English tutor, so I guess I could do that. Tuesday night I went to the Englischstammstisch (English Conversation) to meet some more Germans, even if they did want to speak in English with me. I'm happy that I'm finally meeting more people here and people are also recognizing me. It makes me feel like I'm finally integrating, and my German itself is noticiably getting better because sometimes if I want to say something in English to a fellow exchange student friend, the German words come to my mind first without me requiring the effort to translate them.

This weekend I'll be going to Mainz with a friend. We leave tomorrow (on Friday), and I'm a bit disappointed that I'll be missing the American Thanksgiving that we Americans all were going to put on as a group, but I don't want to pass this opportunity up.

At the moment I don't have much more to add. When I've told some people about my blog, and how I vent my feelings into it, people wonder why I do that, and why I'd want to remind myself of my frustrations. But when I went back and skimmed over what I had written so far, I realized that, certainly yes I've written about frustrating topics and so forth, but that has certainly not been the overall theme of everything there. I will continue to be honest about if I'm frustrated or whatever the case may be (at least if it's relevant to write about here, I mean), but there are also plenty of stories in here that I'm glad I've written, and in the future when I'm home, someday I think I'll enjoy going back over these entries and re-reading it.

Until next time, hopefully soon, I hope this finds you well.

Have a happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Tristan

Another Note

Dear Constant Readers,

I wanted to post last night, but the internet crashed and didn't come back up again until sometime today. But better late than never, as it is said to be.

The theme for this week is mainly language woes, which I've written about before. I don't mean to rehash everything, and I'll try not to, but this is something that's important to me. After I came home from Mexico on July 13, 2003 I believe, I was learning German. Literally. By July 14th, 2003 I was already at work memorizing German definite articles. (To fellow German language learners, I've come to the conclusion that if German was eradicated of its gender, it would not be so tough to master: its the reason of the Geschlecht that makes Deutsch so wily. Any bites?) That was around three years ago when I began teaching myself German. I need to learn this language. I have to! I need it to pass my classes for one thing, but that's beside the point. I owe it to myself to learn this language. Once I dedicated myself to the fact that I'd learn German all-go or none at all three years ago, I had to make certain sacrifices. In a way, it was a lot like a "marriage" of sorts, and since I believe languages to be alive in their unique way, with their own spirits and personalities (metaphorically speaking) perhaps it was like "marrying" someone. I had to make sacrifices with time, which I haven't always been to faithful about. I had to really make sacrifices with books I read, and this is perhaps one of the Top Three Reasons to Learn German for myself: I love to read, but since embarking on this linguistic endeavor, which I do not for a second regret, my list of books to read has grown like a mushroom cloud. Reading books for fun now is like a gulp of fresh air. I barely have time to do either while I'm studying during the year, so over Christmas Break and summer I'm usually buried in a book somewhere. Thank God I've mostly lost my taste for TV and computer-games (nothing against them, I'll be a lifelong Age of Empires fan, but I'd rather spend my time elsewhere now).

The side effect, somewhat unexpected, is that now I have the same hunger now for reading grammar books that I used to have exclusively for novels. Today while a friend of mine was sitting in one of the walled-off quiet rooms to study, I picked up a book of Japanese grammar and started splunking through it for an hour or so just as eagerly as if I had been reading an anthology of short stories. But it is two different things, and I sometimes I really miss my novels. A future re-arrangement of time might be order.

The other night I heard that a student here at Cusanushaus thought the Americans this year were especially bad in how much English they were speaking. I agree, do I ever agree. And I'm guilty of it, too. But I don't know what to do about it. I'm trying to expand my social circle here so that I'm not always around English, and also just to meet more people, but when I'm with them, I cannot speak German. Frankly it would probably be a bit of a faux pas because it just wouldn't gel.

I was looking forward to my German language instruction course, hoping it would alleviate some of these woes, but it has not. I'm thinking of trying to advance out of it to the next level up, to see if it's more of a challenge. It's still early to see what we'll be doing, but judging by the slow, loud way the professor talks to us, I don't imagine it's going to help me advance much. Pride aside, I didn't spend three years worth of energy for this. Frankly, a language ought to be learned in much less than three years, if you use the right method. But what's the right method? Everyone learns differently, so I'm still experimenting with it. I think I learn best by reading though. Reading grammatical examples, namely. Retaining them is another story.

The best way to learn is being with natives. The fact I spent all this time teaching myself and flying halfway around the world to learn this language shows to myself at least that I'm serious about learning it. Yet coming here has also reminded me how difficult it is to learn a language sometimes. There were times (I won't say "days" because that implies I think they lasted only for a day and then left, for a while) when I felt that if it hadn't been for living in the country itself, there was no way in hell I'd have learned Spanish. I just would have been so frustrated I would have said "No wife is worth this!" and thrown all my language stuff into the Nautla that flowed through my host city. I think, though, some of those frustrations are founded upon more than just a language, but on many factors that involve interacting with people, but there comes a point when you say something that you would have bet your set in hell on was correct and understandable, and they look at you like most people would look at a Pollock painting: "What in Bob's holy name is he trying to say??" The thing about learning, though, is that it doesn't all come with smooth ease...it sometimes comes in chunks. And some of them are painful chunks. But you have to take the good with the bad, and eventually you'll master it, if you persevere, if your heart's in it. I think that for the biggies in life, even academic ones where the class genius is tried in fire, so to speak, the largest part of learning is driven by the heart, not the intellect. If your heart is into something, that is what fuels you. Even if you have a mind as keen as a whip, if you have no desire, you're in someone else's way.

What else to say? I missed another traveling chance. Most of the regular group went down to Saarbruecken, on the French border, and asked me to come. I wanted to, but had plans with someone else, and wasn't sure when she'd contact me. But she fell ill, so I ended up not going anywhere at all. That night, though, once everyone got back, we all went to see "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America to Make Kazhikstan Great blah blah something or the other" something like that. I'm not sure if it's out in America yet, but I'd give it a freshness rating of....hmm....I guess 65-70%. I might have given it higher had I been able to see it in English and not German. The satire on American culture is quite good, although it only focuses on a slice of Americana (and judging by the treatment of that slice, perhaps it's better Borat didn't get his mitts on the rest of it).

Anyway, it seems I've run out of things to say, so I'll stop here. It's already getting late, and I still have some other messages to respond to before it gets later.

To all those who read this, may it find you well!

Sincerely,
Tristan

The first post of November

Dear Constant Readers,

Normally I write on Tuesday like I've mentioned before, however since I wrote last Thursday and didn't want to wait for the next Tuesday to roll around, I'll write today, Wednesday.

If you are so inclined, you can now read my blog here at http://tristan85.blogspot.com/ rather than at Facebook. It makes no difference to me, or perhaps to you either, since the messages are completely the same. But now you have the power to choose. Choose away! And if you are already reading this at Blogspot, ignore this last paragraph, of course.

I've done my best to be honest in these messages. I'm trying to show not so much what living abroad is like ("Today we went here, yesterday we ate this, and we could never do this at home..." and so forth). I think those are important, and surely I will write entries that touch upon those themes. But that's not what I personally want to write about overall. I want to discuss more what living abroad does to a person, their views, their feelings, and so forth. Frankly, I could be writing this at home, in a sense. There is ultimately no difference between being in Germany, or being in Lincoln, or being anywhere else when it comes to themes of this nature. All one needs is a set of circumstances and the willingness to look at them with an open mind and heart. That is difficult to do at times, but worth it, and that is what I'm attempting to achieve.

Some people have commented via email or whatever on how frank these messages have been, and generally I've taken that all as a compliment. I always tried to be myself, but it's a gradual process to have the courage to be who you are. I learned to not give a flying leap at the moon sometime between after having arrived home from Mexico and going to college. At least that's when I started to get the courage for it. Before leaving for Mexico I was fairly quiet and not a little lonely much of the time. Maybe I changed while living there, but I don't think I did. Deep down I could see the person always there, but scared to overcome his shyness. In some ways I still am shy, but not like I used to be. I still don't like getting in front of a group of people, and sometimes I feel like I cannot speak my true mind and heart. But over all, I became far more frank in my opinions, and also tried to become more diplomatic in how I said them. Honesty is a good thing, but it must also not be handled like a cruise missle.

That said, I've become nervous at putting my blog on a public medium. As I already explained to a friend here, I put it on the public internet, so technically anyone in the world could read it. But I did not write it for just anyone...If I could close it off with a password, I would do just that. Frankly, that's the reason I wanted it on Facebook, but most of my friends here don't have Facebook, so Blogger it was. Ultimately, I guess I shouldn't be afraid of others I don't know about reading this. I'm not sure how interesting this will be to people who don't know me, and besides, they are my opinions and mine alone. Everyone who reads this will have opinions of their own, and that is how it should be.

I put this here for a few reasons: to at times vent, I admit, but also because I want others to read this. Think of it as an opinions column. These are naturally personal thoughts, but they aren't private ones. I keep another diary for that, and most of what's in there would probably not interest anyone except myself. Besides, no one's going to read that book until I'm long gone and fertilizing daisies. In the mean time, enjoy these, please. :-)

So how will I change while being here in Germany, after having the ability to look back at Mexico? I don't know. Perhaps I'll go to the other end of the spectrum and become more reserved. Perhaps not. By nature I am a trusting individual, which is both a good and troubling thing. It's easy for me to open up to most people, but not to all. And of course I don't suddenly say everything on my mind either. There are people here who I enjoy speaking with, but I still have not told anything really about me, despite having known them for a month or so. I'm not always the open book I sometimes feel like I am. I cannot predict how I'll change. Maybe the won't even be "changes" so much as "developments" in the coming into of my own self. A change sounds more like something becomes something different, but I think in many people's cases, they are becoming who they always were, deep down. I don't know, because there are millions of influences on all of us, but I think that even with all that, there's still the core individual who is (hopefully) always there, even at the end of it all. To be true to one's self is important, that goes without saying. I can think of times that I spoke what was really on my mind about something and was afraid that someone would think I was nuts or that I was being a real pain in the ass, or something, but several times I was surprised, a bit shocked, and very relieved when what I said was recieved well and contrary to what I feared, complimented for being honest. I'm not at all saying that I'm holier than thou, I have done many a screw-up, believe me. We've all been there. But what I mean is being who I am I've generally found to have far better, and sometimes surprisingly pleasing results, than when I have to act. As there are no certainties in life, this is not always the case at all, but it is enough of the time for me to believe that being who you are is generally the right course of action.

I actually don't have anything else to say tonight. I almost didn't write because of that. This was the only thing I could think of. I hope what I did write didn't go too much into the area of being silly or cheesy in its "be who you are" theme. I tried not to be so heavy-handed in it, because I myself dislike it when others get heavy-handed and harp about something.

I guess I could talk about how I'm frustrated with the German language right now, but I'm taking steps actually get out my grammar book and read it while listening to classical music (I heard that it makes the brain more attentive, I don't know if it's true or not), so I'll give it a little while longer and see how things go before deciding on whether or not to comment on it.

Anyway, to all of you who have read my blog, please be at ease if anything I've said has been upsetting at all. That is the last thing in the world I want to do to anyone. I hope that it's found you well, and I hope that you enjoy reading it, similarly how I've been surprised to learn at how much I enjoy writing it. Maybe someday I could become a weekly opinions writer. :-) Or not...I'm not concerned about it at the moment. Speaking of newspapers, I just finished writing an article for Wesleyan's paper who's title I can never spell, so I won't even try it here, but anyway, sometime in the future it will be published. It will have some of what I talked about here, but I felt a little rushed at the writing of it, so I hope it sounds well. I would rather have written one a little towards the middle or end of my trip here, because I think I would have had more general things to say about Germany itself than I do at the moment.

I have to say this though, now that school has finally started. I've met some really awesome people here, and thank God for that. That's what I ultimately wanted to do when I came here (besides learn another language). Friendship to me is the most important thing from this trip (or anything, really) and if any of you are reading this, and you know who you are, thank you thank you thank you.