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.