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.

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.

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.

Because I want to write some sort of entry on this blog at least once this month but am not yet in the states and have thusly not yet started my boycott of the English language, I thought I would write something else that has to do with the overlying theme of this blog.

One of my favorite bands, who until now only sang songs in Finnish, has now recorded their same songs in English. Until now, their albums have not even been available outside of Finland hardly at all, but now more people are likely to be interested in them now that they sing in English.

It got me thinking that a lot of the music I listen to is in languages I don't speak, and usually the music from these bands is hard to get a hold of in the states. Do bands and singers really have to have English lyrics in order for people all over the world to be interested in them? It is simply another thing to add to my list of things that make English the world's language that I want to find out why this is the case.

In the next week or so, I need to call my grandma who is going to be in South Carolina when i'm there, and tell her that I won't be speaking English unless I say all of the same things in German first.

The other day, I was in a section of the library where people are not allowed to talk at all. My friend and I were studying separate things, and she was working on her English homework. She asked me to use a word on her list in a sentence, so I did. A library lady came up to me and said "you're not allowed to talk here." I was so angry that she said that in English. Am I crazy for being angry about something like that? I couldn't even figure out why that made me so mad.

This is my first-ever time creating a blog on here. I have never before felt the need to create a blog about something specific I am doing. After all, I have my livejournal (which most everyone I know can't read anyway).

So what made me want to do this? Well, I am a German major with high hopes of moving to Germany for good someday soon. I have spent a wonderful year in Konstanz, Germany, and have to sadly go back to the states in less than 2 months. This will cause a lot of shock, and I may go crazy. But there is one thing I do have control over: whether or not I just go back to speaking English like normal, or whether I continue to speak German as much as I have been since September.

On to the point of this blog: Starting as soon as I arrive in the states, I am boycotting English for as long as it takes to come back to Germany. This is going to take at least as long as it takes me to finish my bachelors degree.

My reasons for boycotting English include:

-A way to measure time
-A way to keep learning and not forget anything in German
-I would probably accidentally speak German a lot of the time anyway
-If my daily interactions with people that have been in German for the past year (buying stuff, asking people for directions, etc) were suddenly in English, it would be unbearable.

-It's an experiment to see how many hoops I would have to jump through to talk to have all of the same interactions with my friends, random people, and anyone else I need to talk to, without saying a single word in English.
-English is the world's language. A ridiculous amount of movies are in English (The US seems to make up most of the world's movie industry), and a lot of music is, as well (Japanese singers, after all, like to put random English words into their songs). If 2 leaders from non-English-speaking countries who also don't speak the same language as each other have a meeting, they speak English. And in China, people working for big companies are usually required to email their coworkers in English.

Why is English the language that so many people choose to learn, and just how true is it that people in the states typically don't speak other languages? The only way I can find these things out is through this experiment.

The rules:

-Anyone can speak English to me. I can't willingly not understand English, and it would be really stupid of me to pretend i didn't.
-I can still write in English. this isn't about not communicating in English, it's about not speaking it. Besides, writing stuff down to talk to people is also a way of keeping track of when I would have to use English.
-I can only speak English in class, at work, and in a life-threatening emergency (life-threatening only). Other than those times, I can't speak a single word of English unless I am quoting something that someone else said.
-I'm not limited to German. I can use other languages. I speak Farsi, and so does my mother (and my sister understands it just fine). They and my German-speaking dad are basically safe from not being able to talk to me.

I am making only one exception to the above rules: My first week in the states will be spent in the middle of the woods with my aunt. She can actually speak German, but since she probably hasn't used it in awhile, I am going to speak English but only after I say everything in German, and then word it the exact same way when I say it in English. I will thus be making this exception for everyone else who happens to visit us while i'm there.

In the unlikely event that I do leave the forest and go into the city (which is unlikely because I will not be ready to go into a city that soon after arriving in the states, and I would not choose that particular city to be the first one i venture into, either) I will have to still not speak English at all.

After my time there, however, the real work begins, and I will not speak English out loud at all unless I am in class, at work, or if someone could die if I didn't speak English. I don't necessarily expect my friends to understand my reasons. In fact, I fully expect some of them to get annoyed, and while I will hate it, I am prepared for it. At times, I will be very tempted to speak English, especially in conversations with people. This will not in any way be easy. I am, however, fully prepared to do this. I have given it several months of thought, and I am not backing down.

The purpose of this blog is to record anything that happens as a result of my not speaking English. I will encounter problems that I have not yet thought of, nevermind the ones I have already considered.

My next post will likely not be for a month and a half, when I have to go back to the states.