The first day of school.

And what a first day of school it was.

The biggest (actually, the only) culture shock I experienced in Germany was my first day of school. The classes worked so differently in the way they were set up. While my classes in the states have always included almost nothing other than an introduction about how the class is going to work as if it were everyone's first day of school ever, my classes in Germany all had the same routine, and therefore did not explain a thing to the students about how the class was going to work. Sometimes my classes in Germany would not even have a syllabus, or would only have a very vague one that included only information about what we were going to be talking about in class, and conveniently leaving out anything about when the tests are.

I ended that first day of school in Germany with a good long cry.

I was just as surprised by the classes here, even though I had been going to college in the US for 3 years before I studied in Germany. I had 2 classes today, and both professors wanted to know what everyone's major was and why they were taking this class. I was very happy to see that I was not the only one majoring in a language in my business class. There was also a lot of putting up a projection of the syllabus and pointing out everything to the "ok, we get it" point.

For the most part, I have stopped boycotting English. I don't know for how long, really. I started off speaking in a British accent, but the longer I conversed with people, the more it turned back into my horrible California accent.

Not only am I putting my English boycott on hold because of stress and not wanting to find alternatives for talking to people, but because something unexpected happened: I really like my roommate. The other 2 roommates I have had at my school were terrible people for me to live with. So liking my roommate enough to be able to have conversations with her, right off the bat, is a first for me. Of course, I was planning to make whoever I live with an exception to the boycott anyway, but I can't speak English to my roommate and not to her friends who I have been spending time with.

Though I have been speaking only German to myself, my diary, my Goddess, and my dad, and only Farsi to my mom and my sister, the amount of English I have been using has been driving me crazy. While I was waiting for a class to start, the class that was in the room right before mine was a beginning German class, with a teacher I had never seen before. I know all the German teachers, so I figure that this woman must have only started teaching here last year or this year. When I went into the room, I said "Guten Tag" to her, even though of course she had no clue who I was and I had equally as much of an idea who she was.

I was, however, very happy to be reunited with one of my best friends after class today. I am learning French in order to talk to her and others in something besides English, but until I do, I am talking to her in English. I don't know how I could have pictured walking around the city with her without being able to have a lively conversation. I'm glad I chose to speak English with her. But my French class starts tomorrow, so I think it will help me a lot if I say everything I can say in French even if I have to speak English.

I was a bit afraid of going back into anything remotely resembling my old routine, since it's heartbreaking enough that i'm not in Germany. When my friend and I became inflicted with the same ailment and needed to drop everything and run to the student health center, that was a situation in which I would have had to speak English anyway. It may not have been life-threatening, but I had lots of questions for the nurse, and needed to talk to my friend as well, in between our visits with the nurse and while we were waiting. And since I was not in as much of an emergency situation as my friend and didn't need to see a doctor right away, I have to make a phone call tomorrow to set up an appointment with the health center. And talking on the phone wouldn't be possible without speaking English anyway. I never got sick in Germany, but I know people who did, and they were able to speak English with the doctors if they needed to. But if I didn't speak English here, I would be in a very tough situation. So why is it so different?

I definitely preferred my first day of school in Germany, though I was incredibly happy to see my friend again.

The funniest thing happened to me today. I was at an Opera Night with my mom, and at some point this woman saw me and said something (I'm pretty sure she said "those candles are pretty, aren't they?") and I nodded. I don't know why she would have expected me to say anything in response, since what she said wasn't something that one can really reply to except nodding, but she suddenly asked "do you speak English?"

I was very amused by this, because "do you speak English" is a question I have hardly ever been asked before, aside from the random women in Paris and Berlin and big cities who ask random people for money. Pretty much, everyone everywhere assumes everyone else speaks English even if they don't. So getting that question is weird enough without taking into account the fact that I was in America when I was asked if I spoke English. In the US, one doesn't normally run into someone who doesn't speak English.

On hugs and books

I have, without really thinking about it, been speaking English with everyone I have encountered who doesn't speak German or Farsi. As much as it saddens me that this English boycott is failing right now, I can also look at it as a milestone, because it does not make me want to cry when I speak English to people and I have not normally started crying when something happens to make me notice that I am not in Germany. I imagine that it has gotten easier since I came back to my hometown after my unsuccessful apartment hunt, because when I went to my university city it was actually the first time I had ever been out without my family since coming back to the states, and I was constantly in shock every time I went outside of the hotel. After that, going out somewhere with my mom or dad is a piece of cake compared to venturing out by myself.

There is one piece of the overall culture shock that I have only just noticed that I feel like I should talk about, and that is hugs. The act of hugging someone differs completely in the US from everywhere else I have been. In Germany, it is normal to hug someone, at least in my experience. I got so used to hugging all of my friends and everyone while I was there, that the lack of hugs in the US took some getting used to. The first people I spent time with other than my family when I came back to the states were my mom's Iranian friends. Being Persian myself, I have often been part of the whole hugging thing that Iranians do. When Iranians are together, they hug eachother, even if they have only just met. The point is that, just like in Germany, I was already hugging my mom's friends that I had only just met as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

The next few times I met people for the first time in the states, however, I hugged them just like normal before realizing that I obviously shouldn't have. As a girl, I suppose it is more forgivable, but I was definitely not prepared for a small fact that I had completely forgotten about: people in the states do not hug eachother ever. "Ever" is probably an exaggeration, but my point is that the American definition of a "space bubble" is much larger than probably anywhere else. The differences between US culture and every other culture I have ever had exposure to are vast, and hugging is one of these differences that has always confused me.

Now for some more of my rambling on a different topic. I went to a book signing today, to listen to an emerging author, Yiyun Li, talk about her books and her life as a writer. She came from China as a college student, intending to study math and physics but then became a writer. One person in the audience asked a question that I too had been wondering: why Yiyun Li writes in English and if she also writes in Chinese. Yiyun Li answered this question by saying that no, she doesn't write creatively in Chinese because the kind of writing she associates with Chinese is writing everything except for the truth, as a code that she used when she kept a diary so that her mother would not find out that what she wrote was a diary. It is also interesting to me that she claims to not have been able to speak English with people when she first came to the US even though she had learned English and could read in English, and yet not very long later she has published a handful of novels and short story collections in English.

As an aspiring writer, I have often wondered what it would be like to write in German. My sister once said, jokingly, that I should write my book that i'm writing in German. I responded with "do you have any idea how annoying that would be?" because I would have to translate everything i've already written into German, and then somehow come up with the same way of writing and everything in a different language. The only way i would translate my book is if it's already finished and I just want to translate it for practice or because I have nothing better to do.

Though I doubt I could ever write something in German that is even worth publishing, I have written creatively in German before, mostly for random assignments in school. At the end of my first year of studying German, I had to write my own fairy tale. It only had to be a couple paragraphs. Then, after only a couple more months of studying German, at the beginning of my 2nd year (though I suppose that was technically the 3rd year because I skipped year 2) I had to, once again, write a fairy tale and make it 2 pages. I took the same story I wrote before and wrote the whole thing again from scratch, and it was strange how much better the exact same story was after only a few more months of learning German. I sort of want to write the same story again now, almost 3 years later, and see how much better I can make the same story. If I actually do that, i'll be sure to post it.

After breaking my English boycott due to the stress of finding an apartment when, in less than 2 weeks, 2 people I had plans with to live with told me it wasn't going to work after all after which I had no luck finding an apartment because no one returned my calls or emails except for one person who interrogated me, I am back in my hometown, having settled for a dorm room this year, and am once again not speaking English. But my family seems to have forgotten, since I would not be speaking English with them anyway.

My mom and I had a movie-filled day. We first watched a German movie that I had never seen, which took place half in Germany and half in Japan. When the main character goes to Japan, I was for some reason thinking that that half of the movie would be in Japanese, but there ended up being a lot of English in that movie, because every time a German person talked to a Japanese person in the movie, they spoke English. Not that it was a bad thing, it simply reminded me of how many times I made friends in Germany whose native language wasn't German either and how often we misunderstood eachother because we were speaking something that wasn't a native language to either of us. But once again, while watching this movie, I wondered why English is always the default language that people are most likely to know, no matter where they are (though that's not entirely true. I have heard from several friends who have had experiences in countries in which people don't speak English at all). I barely speak Japanese, but even a little bit is enough to know that it's much easier than English. And so is German, for that matter, for entirely different reasons.

My mom and I then went to an Iranian film festival. We watched 5 films, 4 of which were 10 minutes or shorter (The fifth one, unfortunately, was 50 minutes long and was so boring that I pretty much spaced out. It wasn't about anything at all and wasn't at all entertaining). My favorite of the movies was called Diplomacy, and was about 10 minutes long, about 2 government people, one from Iran and one from the US (the latter of whom was played by the lady who was MaryAnn in True Blood and Admiral Cain in Battlestar Galactica (and it was surprising to see an actual famous professional actress in any of these films)), and their interpreters who start manipulating the conversation. They are doing so at first only to change things that could be offensive, but then get carried away and start completely changing what the government people are saying. It was really funny, and I thought the general idea was very clever.

Without further ado, a random part of the film.

After 2 definite plans with people have ended up not working at practically the last minute, I have given up looking for housing.

I have spent 2 days in the city I go to school in, and I have basically put my English boycott on hold this whole time because I am too stressed and tired to find alternatives to speaking English (but speaking English so much has only irritated me). I have still spoken only German when on the phone with my dad and only Farsi when on the phone with my mom. So at least I know that no matter how much of a success or failure this English boycott is, I won't stop speaking things other than English with my family.

I feel so depressed because I came all the way here way ahead of time because originally I thought I would already have a place and would be looking for a job, and then I thought I would be looking for a place. Since I have done absolutely nothing other than walk around drinking bubble tea, I am going back home tomorrow after I apply for a dorm room. I was originally thinking I would make an exception for whoever I lived with, but since I am just going to be living in the dorms after all, whether or not I speak English with my roommate just kind of depends.

As I was talking to my dad and my sister in the car today, I said everything in German and in Farsi, like I have been doing whenever the 3 of us are talking together. My sister said "You just said everything in German and then in Farsi. Do you see how much of a waste that is? We could have had so much more conversation."

Then I came home and got a message from my aunt saying that I shouldn't continue this English boycott just to prove that I can do it, because I could be missing out on a lot of social interactions and not be able to express myself. But I'm not doing it to prove I can do it. I have already known since months before it even started that I could do it. As for social interactions, I talk too much anyway even though I know that only half of what I say is important. Besides, one thing i'm worried about is that the pushiness I acquired while in Germany (which is completely normal in Germany) may be seen as rude here (when in fact I don't think it's rude at all and that the way most people in the US act is what's really rude). So if I can't say "excuse me!" if I need someone to move, I can't be called rude.

And about social situations, I think I have so far been more encouraged to be social than I ever was before, because I am always looking for stuff to go to as fodder for this experiment.

The reason I don't like speaking English is because every time I do, I feel like all people hear (and definitely all I hear), regardless of what i'm saying, is "I'm american and I will probably always have to live here and never be able to move to Germany for good."

I'm not boycotting English in order to prove anything. I'm doing this because i'll go crazy if I don't, and because every time I speak English, something just hurts and makes me feel bad about myself.

English boycott 1 month and 4 days. Talk of exceptions.

Housing options for people who are boycotting English look pretty slim.

Some of my friends have been begging me to make exceptions for them. A lot of my friends are people I don't get to talk to often and wouldn't want to impair a conversation with. I have one idea, but I don't know if it will work. I think that since most of the people who want me to make exceptions are people who don't live near me and who I hardly ever get to talk to on the phone or video chat, let alone in person, I think that for every time I make an exception for someone and speak English, I will have to read 50 pages of a German book before I read anything else, not counting anything German that I read before making an exception for someone (even earlier the same day). Why 50 pages? Because 50 German pages is for me the equivalent of 100 English pages, which is the average number of pages I read per day. So I am making a whole day's page quota be in German if I speak English to someone who isn't my teacher or boss or roommate or landlord.

Because I am only taking 4 or 5 German books with me, only 2 of which are longer than 200 pages (so if I make an exception only 4 times, I will already have finished 1 of my German books), and will not be back from school until December for the rest, I can only make a limited number of exceptions for people during the first term of school.

This will limit the number of exceptions I can make, and maybe almost kill the desire to make exceptions for people. If 2 of my German books weren't all the way at the bottom of a suitcase that I packed as soon as I got here in preparation for going to school, I would dig them out and see just how many German pages I am bringing with me to my university city.

I visited my aunt, who lives practically in the middle of the woods. Since it's very much like where I spent the beginning of my summer, I decided to translate everything I said in German into English. After all, there wasn't much point in only speaking German when I was only talking to my aunt. I did meet 2 other people who came over, and translated everything I said for them too. But a lot of times, they knew what I said just from my tone of voice, so I didn't always have to translate.

In addition to saying everything twice and getting thirsty, there were a couple other problems. I felt like, since no one spoke German and I was translating, I had to say the German sentence really fast in order to actually say the sentence in a way they would understand. I started making mistakes in German that I have never made before in my life, simply because I was saying it in a hurry and no one would understand it anyway. I felt so bad for the fact that I stooped so low to start speaking German badly all of a sudden. But when I go to the city I go to school in, I won't have family there who will be sad if they can't understand me. Sure, I have friends who don't speak German or Farsi, but it's not the same as having family members I have loved since I was a kid not being able to understand me. And since it's an actual city, there will be more interactions in stores that I will be upset about if I speak English. I don't know why it's the interactions with random people being in English that disturbs me so much. Maybe it's because for a whole year, 1/21st of my life, all of those things were in German, whereas not necessarily all of my conversations with friends were in English.

Speaking of which, I have hit a snag with my housing situation when I get to my university city. I was planning to fly there next week, but it turns out that things won't work out with my friend who I was planning to move in with. It has nothing to do with anything she or I did, so i'm not super upset, but it puts me in a tough situation. Now I have to find a place to live, fast. Not only that, but I have to find someone to live with that speaks either German or Farsi, since I refuse to speak English. We'll have to see how this works out.