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.