English Boycott day 23

The other day, I went to an opera night thing at a restaurant with my mom. Some friends of my mom were there, some who I hadn't seen in awhile who I wanted to talk to, and others who I had never met before who I wanted to talk to. And hardly any of them spoke Farsi or German, and only one of them spoke either of these languages fluently. So talking to people was quite a challenge.

Before the singing started, there was at least a half-hour of talking and holding drinks. It's so surprising how supportive my mom has been about my not speaking English, and how my dad doesn't understand at all why i'm doing this, when it's normally not at all this way with my parents. My mom told each person "this is my daughter, she's on strike and isn't speaking English." I sometimes just spoke German or Farsi with people and they sometimes understood what I said just by my tone of voice. It's a lot easier than pretending to be deaf and writing everything on a piece of paper like I did at the airport.

My mom told everyone about her trip with me in Austria, and also about how difficult it is to get ahold of me because of how often I avoid the telephone like it's a possessed object. One of her friends said to me "See, we're talking about you. Don't you want to say anything?" And funny enough, I didn't have anything to say, even though my mom was talking about me. I just wasn't getting the urge to add something.

Later on, with my sister, however, she suddenly refused to listen to anything I said unless I spoke English. Every time I said anything, she'd say "what?" and pretend she hadn't heard me. But she soon gave up after I continued to say stuff in Farsi.

I have slipped up a few times, so not everything is going perfectly perfect.

Before my sister had to get on a plane and go to Burning Man, she had some clothes to sell. So we went shopping. I avoided speaking English, and even spoke German at a pizza place. But when I went in search of gloves that I had been looking for, the store had them in glass cases instead of on the counter like they did the last time I went there several years ago. I had to ask someone to take the gloves out so I could see them. I decided to do it in English, because I got scared. I have bad memories of this store, because the first time I went there, they accused me in advance of shoplifting, when I have in fact never stolen anything from a store in my life and had no intention of doing so.

I immediately felt guilty for speaking English, and felt horrible anyway because asking for things in stores and buying things is exactly the type of situation that I miss doing in German, and yet it is the most difficult thing to keep doing in German. I can be sure that I won't want to speak English in a store again because for some reason it makes me feel horrible and makes me crazy.

This is how many people are needed in a band for Persian music to have all of the elements it needs.

I went to a Persian music performance with my mom, and every single occupant of one of the 100 seats in the 20 rows of the theatre was Persian. It felt great to be able to tell people to stop taking pictures with the flash turned on, or that they were in my way, in a language other than English, just like in Germany. That's one of the most frustrating things about not speaking English. I can't say "excuse me" if I need to get by someone, so I instead just have to wait. I suppose this is a good thing, however, because the usual "excuse me" or "um, excuse me please?" doesn't work in Germany. One has to say "Entschuldigung!!!" loud and firm, making it perfectly clear that the person in front of you has to move so that you can get by. Having absorbed that piece of German culture while I was there, I did not want to sound rude in the US by saying "Excuse me!!!" Well, there is no need to worry, because this English boycott has actually made me more patient by making me wait for people to move instead of automatically saying "Excuse me!!!" I think if I said "Entschuldigung" to people here, they would just look at me with no clue that I had asked them to move.

Today, my sister Lily came back from an adventure working at an organic farm, and we saw eachother for the first time in 8 months. My dad doesn't speak Farsi, and my sister doesn't speak German, and yet I had no problem talking to both of them, because they both got the gist of what I said in either language. For example, when I pointed to my sister's new nose piercing and asked "ist das neu?" she knew I was asking her if it was new. My dad has been known to understand the occasional thing in Farsi, after 12 years of being married to my mom, who always spoke to my sister and I in Farsi (the other day, I was talking to my mom on the phone, and my dad heard me say "hitchi" and started laughing. After I hung up the phone, I asked my dad what was so funny, and he said "well, you said 'nothing' so I assume she asked what you were doing.")

During my conversation with my sister in the car after getting her from the airport (in which I spoke Farsi and she spoke English), I found myself blanking on the word for "time" in Farsi. I asked my dad in German what the word for time was in Farsi (saying "wie sagt man 'Zeit' auf Persisch?"), and amazingly he knew what it was, which I was not expecting.

I managed to get through 3 of my 4 doctor, etc, appointments without speaking any English. At my appointment yesterday, my mom came with me (i needed her there anyway) and translated for me. You know what both women who examined me said about my English boycott? "That sounds great, i'm all for it!"

I think the hardest part is having to answer the phone if it's a doctors or dentist or glasses store or something person calling, because I have to answer, and I can't just write, so I have to speak English.

English boycott: day [insert number here because I forgot and am too lazy to count]

Yesterday, I had an appointment with the eye doctor. I didn't have to speak English with him, because he speaks Farsi. I did also manage to talk to the assistant people without speaking English. One of the assistants mentioned that she is from Norway and she learned a little bit of German in school, so when she asked me how long I had been in Germany, I answered in German and she understood me. After the appointment, I tried on some new glasses frames just in case I liked any of them better than the glasses i've had since I was 15. I did not need words to communicate with the assistant who was helping me with it, because between her and me and my dad, all we needed was shaking of heads and weird face expressions to show how much none of us liked the way any of the frames looked on me. When I put my own glasses back on, the girl said "I like those the best!"

Today, my dad convinced me to speak English for my doctor's appointment. I agreed, because once I got there, and the doctor asked me all kinds of questions about my health, there was simply no way I could have written all of my answers on paper. After the appointment, my dad said something (in English, because he is not forbidden from speaking English like I am), and I replied in English before even noticing. I suddenly said "oh crap!" and my dad said "what?" thinking something was wrong or I had forgotten to tell the doctor something, to which I replied "i'm speaking English!" and I right away switched back to German.

In Germany, every time I talked to myself, I spoke German without even realizing it. Upon arriving in the US, however, I have not talked to myself in German without noticing, even once. Unfortunately, even with how seldom (read: hardly ever) I have been speaking English, every time I start talking to myself without noticing, it is always in English.

After the doctor's appointment, my dad and I ate at a buffet restaurant. When the person at the counter asked me what I wanted to drink, I said "Wasser." The guy kept looking at me like I hadn't said anything, so my dad told him "she wants water." I thought for sure "Wasser" would be pretty easy to understand. It sounds just like "Water." I know no one would understand I wanted water if I said "ob" (Farsi) or "mizu" (Japanese). But I thought "Wasser" would be pretty obvious, almost as obvious as the meaning of "Regenbogen" is.

Now that I have spent forever talking about not speaking English and how strange it is to hear people speak English, I will talk about a few other aspects of reverse culture shock.

I bet that before I went to Germany, I would have considered this food ok for consumption. But as it is, i took one bite of each thing and lost my apetite. The cafeteria in Konstanz was better than this! I usually eat everything on my plate, and I can't even remember the last time I left even a crumb on a plate (if my sister or I ever left a plate on the table or somewhere, my dad always knew whose it was, because it would look clean if it was mine, and still have some crumbs on it if it was my sister's), so it was a big event for me to have almost all of the food still on my plate when I was done. It will be very easy to lose the 10 pounds the doctor told me today was extra, because all I have to do when I get hungry is look at some food and think about how bland it is.

I should also mention an event which happened the other day that I still don't know the cause of. My mother and I were out and she suggested going to the mall to buy new pants, because my pants all have holes in them. When we got there, got out of the car and were about to enter the mall, i suddenly said "I want to go home" (in Farsi of course). My mom said "why now all of a sudden? we just got here?" I said "I don't know, I want to go home." My mom started asking all sorts of questions. She asked "did you see someone? did you see something? did you remember something?" I said "no, I just want to go home." If I had allowed myself to speak English, I would have said "do I need a reason?"

By then, I was crying uncontrollably, so my mom had no choice but to take me home. The consensus between my friends and family members and I is that it is culture shock related. However, I really don't know what it was that made me freak out just because I was about to go into a mall. I suppose I will have to suffer from hole-y pants that I have to keep sewing up, until i am able to go into a mall or a store and buy new ones.

English boycott day 12

Deciding not to speak English at all was such a good decision. Now, when i'm speaking Farsi with my mom, if I don't know how to say something, I don't just say it in English, I keep speaking Farsi because i can't speak English. Even when my mom starts speaking English to me, I have to keep speaking Farsi. It would be so much harder to speak Farsi all the time if I hadn't decided to myself not to speak English at all.

And talking to my dad in German is fun. It's a lot easier than talking to my mom and all of her friends in Farsi, but I wouldn't be doing it all the time if I hadn't actually decided to boycott English.

I actually went out with my mom and her friends, and they are all Iranian, and I spoke Farsi the whole time, and they were impressed that I could speak it so well. Sure, I may have been speaking Farsi since I first could talk, but my ability to speak it keeps getting better because I am limiting myself to not speaking English at all.

English boycott day 11

After spending about 5 days in my family's vacation house in the woods with 7 friends and relatives, only one of whom could understand German, eventually my aunt showed up and everyone else left. I had allowed myself, as mentioned in the first post of this blog, to speak English within the premises of our property after saying what I want to say in German first. I spent the whole time not going into the city, because in the city I would have had to speak only German again (not to mention that this city is an extremely typical American one, which I was afraid to venture into at first).

When my aunt got there, however, I felt a lot better about going into the city after days of not, and because my aunt could understand German, I could go to stores and restaurants with her and just tell her what I wanted so she could tell the waiter, etc. I was pleasantly surprised to find that her good friend who came to visit could also understand German, and her daughter could pretty much understand me too.

On my last day there, my aunt and I went to a funeral (for someone who my other aunt who wasn't there knew better, so we didn't have to spend a ton of time talking to people). Since I didn't know the deceased, I didn't have to talk to people. But what if I had had to talk to a lot of people? What if it was the funeral of someone I knew well. Would I have just spoken English after all? I suppose it depends on who had died. If it was someone super important to me, like a close family member, I suppose I would keep speaking German. But if it was someone else like a distant family member or a friend, I would likely speak English, because the chances are I would have something important to say to the family of the deceased.

And of course, at this funeral I could talk to my aunt and say things in German, like "see that girl? I think she's his daughter."

Yesterday, I managed to go to an airport and get on a plane without speaking English. Even when I checked my bag, was told it was overweight, had to take some stuff out and put them in my carry-on or give them to my aunt to hang on to, I didn't speak English. When one of the security people or people at the gate who let people onto the plane said "hello, how are you today?" I didn't answer, and the people didn't notice I didn't answer, because it's their job to ask people how they are, they don't really care. Actually, someone at the gate who was also getting on the plane asked me a bunch of questions, and I managed to answer them just by shaking my head and nodding.

dude: "have you ever been to [destination] before?"

me: *nods*

dude: "did you have a good time there?"

me: *nods*

dude: "so where are you from?"

me: *points to gate sign*

dude: "oh, so are you from [destination]?"

me: *nods*

dude: "cool. i'm from Detroit."

me: *thumbs-up*

I spent pretty much both flights pretending to be deaf rather than just speaking German. For some reason, being at an airport in the states rather than...not an airport... made me nervous to speak another language. I would rather not be mistaken for a terrorist randomly, and I bet in the part of the US I was traveling in, people are a lot less likely to speak something other than English, let alone German or Farsi, than they are where i'm from.

I did accidentally speak English once, when there was not only a lot of confusion about which plane to get on, because there were 2 at the gate, but when I got on the plane, there was someone in my seat, so I was afraid I had been victim to this confusion and was on the wrong plane. It was these things combined that made me speak English. I only said one word, "thirteen," but I was nervous after that that, because my exception to this English-boycott (other than in class and at work when those things start) is in a life-threatening emergency, that because I spoke English outside of a life-threatening emergency, it would now turn into one. The people all closed their windows to cool the plane down faster, so when the plane took off and the windows were all closed, I kept feeling as if the plane was going to crash. This made me scared to speak English for the remainder of the flight, and strengthened my resolve to pretend to be unable to speak for the whole time.

I am now in my state of basically-origin with my dad and my cat, who i'm sure can both understand me. Tomorrow, I have either one or 2 social events to go to, both of which I am sure are mostly full of people who don't speak German. I don't know if I will go to one or both. It depends on what time they are. My dad says I should just make an exception to my English-boycott for the thing he's going to, if I go. I think he is right, because it is with people I don't really know, who I am not likely to see much of in the future, being that I don't really live here. And because it would be nice to talk to people.

At the other event I may be going to, my aunt who doesn't speak German or Farsi is driving me, and I can't exactly converse on paper with someone who is driving or if I am driving. It just doesn't work. It's possible that with my aunt I could just speak German and translate in English like I was doing when I first got to the states, until yesterday.

This is where the real work begins, where I really do have to not speak a word of English out loud. Whether I have to make more exceptions to the rules than work, school and life-threatening emergencies, or if I have to eventually stop doing this altogether are all part of this experiment. It's not about succeeding or failing, but about having control over what language I choose to speak if I can't control what country i'm in. Most people choose to make blogs about their study abroad experiences, but I choose instead to make one about my adjustment (or lack thereof) to the culture I came from.

I have now reluctantly left Germany and arrived in the US. I had been debating whether to stop speaking English as soon as the plane landed or when I got to my final destination. The decision was sort of made for me, since I had to go through passport control (for actually the first time ever where they actually asked me questions and took my customs form), and it would have been just stupid of me to not speak English. But then, once I reached my destination, I managed to just avoid talking until I found my relatives who were waiting for me at the airport.

Just a recap, for this week i'm going to be in the middle of the woods with just a few family members, and as long as I stay in the house, i'm allowed to speak English but only if I speak German first and then translate exactly what I said (because I don't want my grandma and my aunt to have to read what I write on a piece of paper if they don't understand me). On the way back from the airport, I didn't speak English at all, and my basically-cousin was there and could translate everything I said. I am hoping not to have to leave the house for the rest of the time i'm here, since I experienced enough of a culture shock just at the airport to make me want to jump on the next plane back to Germany.

But in a week or so, when I fly back to my dad's house and then later to the city I go to school in (flights on which I will not be speaking English), I can only speak English in class and at work, with the exception of any life-threatening emergencies. I have a dentist appointment and possibly an eye appointment and some other appointments when I go back to my dad's house, and I don't know how I will go to them without speaking English. At least the eye doctor speaks Farsi, but I guess I will have to just figure out what to do for the rest of them. The dentist is actually Iranian too, but no one else in the dentists office is, so I don't know how far Farsi would get me. I suppose we will just have to see what happens if I write everything down on a piece of paper instead of talking.