Hello again
Dear Constant Readers,
What more to say? I was in the middle of a bit of a dismal moment last weekend, and I was going to write about that, but the truth is things have gotten better again, which is indeed better for me, although sometimes it makes it a bit more challenging to think of things to say! :-)
One thing I've learned a bit of this week: Time and space can be wonderful things, and I don't mean quantum physics either. Sometimes they can be what a friendship needs. On Monday I was surprised when a person I know spent some time talking with me, just small talk about movies and TV shows, and wishes for the future, and so on. I was happy, and more than a little taken a back since we hadn't really spoken since a few weeks after school started. Of course I can't see how things go, but relationships of all kinds have funny ways of taking on shapes of their own. There have been some relationship in my life, some strained to the most painful point of all, that I hope are not gone, and this what I'm writing is my message to that person, if their eyes are gracing these words. Even if it takes years, some friendships are too deep to just forget about. I don't know, sometimes the pain goes to deep to want to go back, and maybe it should be cut loose, but in my heart of hearts, I'm not sure that's always the best course of action. I know that I don't want to think ill of people, although some people, although I try and have nothing against them personally, they just drive me up the wall. I don't feel proud about it, because many of them are decent folk, but something doesn't quite pass, rather it irritates. Is this so with anyone else?
It's official, you Joyce fans, I'm going to the land of about 90% of my forfathers, the inventors of the potatoes and rainbows: Ireland. Me and a few other people (two Americans, and one Italian) are going to fly there for a few days in February. Dublin, since you asked. I'm happy about this trip, although I always get nervous before I travel, especially if I don't know the people very well. Fortuantely it's not exactly the situation in this case, I'm quite comfortable with Ily, the Italian, and the other two I get along with quite cordially, but part of me is always afraid of being a wet blanket. It's a bit of quandry for me. I want to be independent, but I also get scared to take that move sometimes, and then kick myself because if I'm going to be independent no one's gonna be there to hold my hand. Indeed, I do enjoy the company of people, and don't want to be selfish. Sometimes I just feel really misanthropic and somehow distrust myself. I suppose that's part of getting to know people better, which can be part of the reason for traveling. In any case, I'm looking forward to the trip. It will be strange to be surrounded by English again, I think, and I was hoping to save that for America, just to see how it felt, in the name of science, but it's a small trifle. :-)
This Ireland trip will be taken during a two month break we have between semesters, and to be blunt about it I'm scared of this break. I'm scared because I want to travel alone but not alone. I want to book flights to other countries, and book hostels to stay in, but I've never really done that before (I guess I had booked the flight here, however) and there's something about making that commitment, about meeting someplace at a certain time, or making a connecting flight on time, that I'm really afraid of screwing up, and then getting lost or having wasted the money because I missed it. Sometimes it feels like I don't have enough common arrange such a plan, that's the bottom line of it all. It's not trusting myself. One would think that after the amount of traveling I've done I'd be over it, but it isn't the case, somehow. It's not rocket science, and yet it still is like a mountain range in front of me.
The other thing is money. I don't really want a job here, but it would take care of money issues and give me something to do if I have too much time on my hands and go bonkers because of it. But I think a job would be tie me down more than I would like. Or maybe I'm making excuses up again. Part of me doesn't want to completely empty my savings over this year; I suppose it's an insecurity thing where I feel like I have nothing to fall back on. A friend of mine here said that since I'm a student, I will be poor anyway and why not go home with no money left? How in the living hell can he say that without even batting an eye? I'd sure as hell bat an eye; I'd lose sleep over it. He pointed out that this is an opportunity that I'll never have again, which made me feel even more pressure to jump. I am helping with an English conversation table every week, as I'm a native speaker they pay a small bit to those who can do it. It's not much at all, but every small bit helps. I mentioned that I wanted to sit in on some of the other language tables (German and Spanish) but since until last week I was the only native speaker of English present, I felt obliged, and didn't particularly mind it either, to sit in and help the students of English. Now that they want to bring in more people, I will have a chance to visit those other tables, but with more people there, not everyone gets paid, and really that's been one of the incentives for me to go. It's only 10 Euros a week (40 a month then) so maybe I'm being a miserly ass, and I don't mean to be unfair to the others, let me say that here so they don't think I mean to have a monopoly over it. The other main incentive (the one I had before I even found it it was paid) was to meet more people, and I can do that just as easily, and to a wider degree, by visiting the other tables without covering for the English one, but it still has bitten me a bit. And then sometimes I feel like a real Scrooge, although that's a bit dramatic. I don't pinch pennies, I go out and eat as much as the next person (although I've been trying to cut back on that, too), in the course of trying to develope some good financial habits, sometimes I feel like I've squeezed too hard and have instead become financially worrysome and insecure instead of financially responsible, and that's what I don't want to be at all.
I don't want to run out of money while I'm here and not be able to travel. I don't want to run out of money, because without it, I feel like I'd really be screwed if something happened and I needed it, although if worse came to worse I suppose I could call home and ask for help. So when it comes to traveling, to those cities and countries and I want to see: Iceland, Berlin, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Austria, Rothenberg, Munich, and so on, the two hurdles are money and overall travel arrangements. More likely than not I'll just tell me lazy self to get a grip and act like a man, but this is at least the honest working of what's on my mind.
I've started reading the other English book I brought with me (after Dracula, and the Bible, although I haven't read the latter in a long time, despite meaning to), "The Stand: Complete and Uncut" by Stephen King. The last book by King I (tried) to read was "Needful Things" and I got about halfway through it before giving up. I decided that by halfway if nothing was happening, nothing really was going to happen. Maybe I'll try to go back to it, it is one of the very few books I have left unfinished (in fact nothing else comes to mind, except for "Dracula" but I eventually re-read and finished that one)...Oh yes, "The Last Battle" by CS Lewis. Although that was special circumstances: I was reading that without hardly reading any other book in the series, so I need to go back and read all of those. I actually got within two pages of the end or so, and then gave up! Of course, had I known that it was part of a series that needed to be read in order (typical of serieses, funny that! And that word can't be right.) maybe I wouldn't have been so bored with it. But anyway, I hate leaving a story unfinished. Everytime I read something in English here, though, I feel guilty, because that could be German I'm learning. But then again, sometimes I need a mental break.
So far though, King's book has been pretty decent. The thing is, it's about a plague disguised as the common flu, and the story is actually rather believable in it's telling. So much so, I kid you not, that when I'm reading it and I hear someone coughing I think "What if..." I wanted to read the shorter version, too, to see how they are different, but I have the longer version at hand, so that's that.
I am reading a book in German, though. "Schiffbruch mit Tiger," known throughout the English world as "The Life of Pi." My friend Katrin is helping me read it, and it's a bit of a humbling feeling, I feel like a grade schooler going through a real book for the first time with a parent. In a way, it's exactly the same system. I read aloud and she looks over my shoulder and corrects my pronunciation or explains what certain words mean. I'm also trying to read it alone, and I've resolved to do all of my German reading (other than with Katrin currently) in my room where I can read aloud to hear the language and get used to making sentences and hearing the sounds. One person here already called me fluent in German, although by my own standards it's still a ways off. The funny thing about fluency though, to those of you who are aspiring language learners, is that you never really you have it until you've had it for a while and you realize that for some time now you've been damn good at expressing yourself for the most part. I suppose it's like being in love, or dying of hypothermea: You don't know it until it's too late. :D I couldn't resist saying that. I mean that in an affectionate, smirking way. But it really is like that. You don't cross a barrier and say, "OK, I'm done," tempting though it may be to believe that. I didn't even realize I could speak Spanish as well as I could until I got back into America. And everytime I speak it I can still feel my limitations in it. There is still a word I'm missing, a grammar bit that I should have known better, for the knowledge in the back of my head that I would probably still need a dictonary to get through most novels. Sometimes I don't feel fluent in it at all, but I know I have it, buried somewhere in me, because I had it before.
Anyways, here it is getting late. I'll finish this off and then write you again next week. Hope things are going fine, wherever you may be!
Sincerely,
Tristan
What more to say? I was in the middle of a bit of a dismal moment last weekend, and I was going to write about that, but the truth is things have gotten better again, which is indeed better for me, although sometimes it makes it a bit more challenging to think of things to say! :-)
One thing I've learned a bit of this week: Time and space can be wonderful things, and I don't mean quantum physics either. Sometimes they can be what a friendship needs. On Monday I was surprised when a person I know spent some time talking with me, just small talk about movies and TV shows, and wishes for the future, and so on. I was happy, and more than a little taken a back since we hadn't really spoken since a few weeks after school started. Of course I can't see how things go, but relationships of all kinds have funny ways of taking on shapes of their own. There have been some relationship in my life, some strained to the most painful point of all, that I hope are not gone, and this what I'm writing is my message to that person, if their eyes are gracing these words. Even if it takes years, some friendships are too deep to just forget about. I don't know, sometimes the pain goes to deep to want to go back, and maybe it should be cut loose, but in my heart of hearts, I'm not sure that's always the best course of action. I know that I don't want to think ill of people, although some people, although I try and have nothing against them personally, they just drive me up the wall. I don't feel proud about it, because many of them are decent folk, but something doesn't quite pass, rather it irritates. Is this so with anyone else?
It's official, you Joyce fans, I'm going to the land of about 90% of my forfathers, the inventors of the potatoes and rainbows: Ireland. Me and a few other people (two Americans, and one Italian) are going to fly there for a few days in February. Dublin, since you asked. I'm happy about this trip, although I always get nervous before I travel, especially if I don't know the people very well. Fortuantely it's not exactly the situation in this case, I'm quite comfortable with Ily, the Italian, and the other two I get along with quite cordially, but part of me is always afraid of being a wet blanket. It's a bit of quandry for me. I want to be independent, but I also get scared to take that move sometimes, and then kick myself because if I'm going to be independent no one's gonna be there to hold my hand. Indeed, I do enjoy the company of people, and don't want to be selfish. Sometimes I just feel really misanthropic and somehow distrust myself. I suppose that's part of getting to know people better, which can be part of the reason for traveling. In any case, I'm looking forward to the trip. It will be strange to be surrounded by English again, I think, and I was hoping to save that for America, just to see how it felt, in the name of science, but it's a small trifle. :-)
This Ireland trip will be taken during a two month break we have between semesters, and to be blunt about it I'm scared of this break. I'm scared because I want to travel alone but not alone. I want to book flights to other countries, and book hostels to stay in, but I've never really done that before (I guess I had booked the flight here, however) and there's something about making that commitment, about meeting someplace at a certain time, or making a connecting flight on time, that I'm really afraid of screwing up, and then getting lost or having wasted the money because I missed it. Sometimes it feels like I don't have enough common arrange such a plan, that's the bottom line of it all. It's not trusting myself. One would think that after the amount of traveling I've done I'd be over it, but it isn't the case, somehow. It's not rocket science, and yet it still is like a mountain range in front of me.
The other thing is money. I don't really want a job here, but it would take care of money issues and give me something to do if I have too much time on my hands and go bonkers because of it. But I think a job would be tie me down more than I would like. Or maybe I'm making excuses up again. Part of me doesn't want to completely empty my savings over this year; I suppose it's an insecurity thing where I feel like I have nothing to fall back on. A friend of mine here said that since I'm a student, I will be poor anyway and why not go home with no money left? How in the living hell can he say that without even batting an eye? I'd sure as hell bat an eye; I'd lose sleep over it. He pointed out that this is an opportunity that I'll never have again, which made me feel even more pressure to jump. I am helping with an English conversation table every week, as I'm a native speaker they pay a small bit to those who can do it. It's not much at all, but every small bit helps. I mentioned that I wanted to sit in on some of the other language tables (German and Spanish) but since until last week I was the only native speaker of English present, I felt obliged, and didn't particularly mind it either, to sit in and help the students of English. Now that they want to bring in more people, I will have a chance to visit those other tables, but with more people there, not everyone gets paid, and really that's been one of the incentives for me to go. It's only 10 Euros a week (40 a month then) so maybe I'm being a miserly ass, and I don't mean to be unfair to the others, let me say that here so they don't think I mean to have a monopoly over it. The other main incentive (the one I had before I even found it it was paid) was to meet more people, and I can do that just as easily, and to a wider degree, by visiting the other tables without covering for the English one, but it still has bitten me a bit. And then sometimes I feel like a real Scrooge, although that's a bit dramatic. I don't pinch pennies, I go out and eat as much as the next person (although I've been trying to cut back on that, too), in the course of trying to develope some good financial habits, sometimes I feel like I've squeezed too hard and have instead become financially worrysome and insecure instead of financially responsible, and that's what I don't want to be at all.
I don't want to run out of money while I'm here and not be able to travel. I don't want to run out of money, because without it, I feel like I'd really be screwed if something happened and I needed it, although if worse came to worse I suppose I could call home and ask for help. So when it comes to traveling, to those cities and countries and I want to see: Iceland, Berlin, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Austria, Rothenberg, Munich, and so on, the two hurdles are money and overall travel arrangements. More likely than not I'll just tell me lazy self to get a grip and act like a man, but this is at least the honest working of what's on my mind.
I've started reading the other English book I brought with me (after Dracula, and the Bible, although I haven't read the latter in a long time, despite meaning to), "The Stand: Complete and Uncut" by Stephen King. The last book by King I (tried) to read was "Needful Things" and I got about halfway through it before giving up. I decided that by halfway if nothing was happening, nothing really was going to happen. Maybe I'll try to go back to it, it is one of the very few books I have left unfinished (in fact nothing else comes to mind, except for "Dracula" but I eventually re-read and finished that one)...Oh yes, "The Last Battle" by CS Lewis. Although that was special circumstances: I was reading that without hardly reading any other book in the series, so I need to go back and read all of those. I actually got within two pages of the end or so, and then gave up! Of course, had I known that it was part of a series that needed to be read in order (typical of serieses, funny that! And that word can't be right.) maybe I wouldn't have been so bored with it. But anyway, I hate leaving a story unfinished. Everytime I read something in English here, though, I feel guilty, because that could be German I'm learning. But then again, sometimes I need a mental break.
So far though, King's book has been pretty decent. The thing is, it's about a plague disguised as the common flu, and the story is actually rather believable in it's telling. So much so, I kid you not, that when I'm reading it and I hear someone coughing I think "What if..." I wanted to read the shorter version, too, to see how they are different, but I have the longer version at hand, so that's that.
I am reading a book in German, though. "Schiffbruch mit Tiger," known throughout the English world as "The Life of Pi." My friend Katrin is helping me read it, and it's a bit of a humbling feeling, I feel like a grade schooler going through a real book for the first time with a parent. In a way, it's exactly the same system. I read aloud and she looks over my shoulder and corrects my pronunciation or explains what certain words mean. I'm also trying to read it alone, and I've resolved to do all of my German reading (other than with Katrin currently) in my room where I can read aloud to hear the language and get used to making sentences and hearing the sounds. One person here already called me fluent in German, although by my own standards it's still a ways off. The funny thing about fluency though, to those of you who are aspiring language learners, is that you never really you have it until you've had it for a while and you realize that for some time now you've been damn good at expressing yourself for the most part. I suppose it's like being in love, or dying of hypothermea: You don't know it until it's too late. :D I couldn't resist saying that. I mean that in an affectionate, smirking way. But it really is like that. You don't cross a barrier and say, "OK, I'm done," tempting though it may be to believe that. I didn't even realize I could speak Spanish as well as I could until I got back into America. And everytime I speak it I can still feel my limitations in it. There is still a word I'm missing, a grammar bit that I should have known better, for the knowledge in the back of my head that I would probably still need a dictonary to get through most novels. Sometimes I don't feel fluent in it at all, but I know I have it, buried somewhere in me, because I had it before.
Anyways, here it is getting late. I'll finish this off and then write you again next week. Hope things are going fine, wherever you may be!
Sincerely,
Tristan
posted by Tristan | 2:25 PM
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