A few very exciting events happened within the past week that I would have had trouble with, had I not been able to speak English.

This past weekend, I went to a live-action roleplaying event, in which I dressed as a tribal cat and threw packets of birdseed (to represent magic) at people.

It took place starting Friday night and ending Saturday night. So all day and all night, I was in character, unless I wore an orange headband. Speaking English is very important while in character, especially while calling out the attacks you're doing, because it isn't considered an attack if the people being attacked don't know what they are being attacked with.

Today, I saw president Obama. In real life. And not all blurry and far away. And it's because I went to a rally in which Obama and some other people talked, including the guy running for governor in the state I go to school in. It was a lot of fun, and I actually talked a lot with people I waited with in line, not to mention tried very hard to call my friends afterwards in order to locate them. Because they unfortunately got there late enough that they couldn't reach where I was in line without being blocked by a wall of people, and thusly didn't see me until the end of the event.

Because I can't vote in the state I go to school in, yet I really want this person to win, I have decided to devote time to calling people and telling them to vote. Another activity that requires English.

I finally was desperate enough to brave the culture shock that the dreaded Safeway had in store for me. I had been avoiding the huge american stores that have bright lights and bad music for as long as I could, waiting outside while my aunt went to Boullineaus, staying in the car while my dad went to Safeway, and going to Whole Foods even though it's a much farther walk. But finally, since 3 people go through tissues a lot faster than one person or even two people do, and it was already getting to be nighttime, and the 2 people I live with both had class or plans, I was the only one who could go to Safeway and get what we needed. I entered Safeway and nearly felt a panic attack coming on. I shielded my eyes from the bright lights and tried to drown out the terrible music as much as possible. But within a few seconds, I was able to go down the aisles in search of what I needed. And I was rewarded along the way. I found Ritter-Sport chocolates, my favorite, the marzipan-filled one. While I was buying it, the cashier asked "how are these, anyway?" indicating the chocolate. I replied with an enthusiastic "they're delicious!"

And because I am volunteering at the study-abroad fair next week (I know that's lame, but it gives me an excuse to talk about Germany), I am going to get a bunch of Ritter-Sport chocolates to use as treats for people who stop by our table.

I have been neglecting this blog for the past week, and have not yet mentioned that I am learning French. There are several reasons for this.

1- I spent some time visiting Geneva and France during my time in Germany

2- If I learn French, I can talk to my dad and my sister Lily at the same time without having to say everything twice (because even though the English boycott was not as successful as I had hoped, I am still not speaking English with my family).

and 3- Because learning a language is fun, and I have often wished I could speak French, and Horatio Hornblower, one of my literary heroes, saves people a bunch of times because he is the only one who speaks French.

I went to the French club last night because they were showing a French movie, and that sounded interesting to me. I was able to introduce myself to people in French, but that was about it, and I had to speak English once they asked me stuff besides who I am and what i'm studying. Such as when I talked to a girl who also transferred here from my old University where I spent my first year. She said she hated it, and I told her that was funny because I loved it but had to leave when they cut my major (German).

This morning was the farmer's market. I had almost forgotten all about it, but after I woke up and ate breakfast, I suddenly exclaimed to my roommate "Today is the farmer's market!"

I went to the market and bought some strange things like pickled carrots, and when I finally found the salmon vendor, the guy remembered me. I was pretty surprised, since I have been gone for over a year, and i'm not a super rememberable person.

Situations in which I had to speak English:

-Cashier at Safeway

-French club

-Farmer's market

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.