Tomorrow through Wednesday I'll be helping out with a youth camp and will probably have very limited access to the internet and email. Not that anyone will notice. I'm a little nervous about working with kids again. Haven't really spent much time around them since I was a Latch Key day care leader, and my memories from that involve alot of boogers, mopping up some barf, and being asked whether I was a boy or a girl. But that was ten years ago and I can hopefully handle all situations with a bit more grace and dignity. At least this time around, I won't really be able to understand what the kids are saying because they're Hungarian, so if they're questioning my gender, I'll just smile and nod and give them a pat on the shoulder. No hard feelings whatsoever.
When I was little, I remember walking around and saying random, nonsensical things to myself and wondering "wow! I wonder what language I'm speaking!" and being fascinated by the thought that somewhere out there was a country, maybe a planet, full of people who would understand my "bing boop sluie bop" to mean "this cookie is delicious". Only when you actually try to learn a new language do you realize how silly you were as a little kid. Seriously, I want to learn Romanian so badly, but the more I learn, the harder and more convoluted it seems. During PST, we didn't get into the confusing grammar too much, just brushed the surface, but now...nothing makes sense. There are about ten different ways to say "this", depending on the gender and the number and the location of what you are referring to. No bing. No boop. And there isn't an exact translation for cookie, which makes me sad. Add on top of that very little time to actually study and co-workers who speak English very fluently and nearly refuse to speak Romanian with you (because they're Hungarian) and gladly translate every little thing for you and you simply don't progress. If anything you regress. And the two different languages thing is getting annoying. I don't know how to greet anyone and I feel bad if I talk to someone in the wrong language and I feel guilty that I'm not learning Hungarian. Bah.
Yesterday, towards the end of my Romanian tutoring session, we some how got onto the subject of ethnic background (in English, of course...cause half the tutoring session is in English) and I mentioned that I'm about 3/4 German. "Really?" my tutor asked, "Do you speak German?" This took me by surprise, nobody has ever asked me about the language when I proudly state that I'm part German. "Uh...no. Nein." I said, feeling clever. "Why not?" She asked and put me on the spot...I suddenly felt that I needed to justify my German-ness. "I've never studied it," I said, honestly. "Didn't your parents speak it at home?" I almost laughed at that question because the idea seemed so strange. "No...not at all. My dad studied it in college, I think." "And you? They didn't offer it at your school?" "Well...they did, actually, but I took French instead..." "What about your grandparents, didn't they speak it?" And this is where it hit me as to why I had no clue about the German language. "I don't think they were allowed to." My response stopped her flow of questions, to my uncomfortable relief, but has been bothering me ever since. Either my grand parents or my great grandparents immigrated here from Germany long ago and I'm sure they maintained their heritage in their cozy German house and kept up their daily German routines and spoke in their native tongue, until a war came along and made them unpopular. They no longer wanted to appear German so they ceased all German activity in public and became so ashamed of their heritage and the horrible things their people were doing that they stopped being German, even at home, refusing to respond to the children when they said "guten morgnen". Now, generations later, I proudly state that I'm 3/4 German and yet I have NO clue what that means. I've had so many ethnicity conversations with friends in the past, where we all sit around and one by one go around the circle and share our heritage and I would say my usual, "I'm 3/4 German, nearly 1/4 Irish, and a tiny bit of Cherokee", and I was so proud of this, my background, my roots, it was something that invoked images of a different time and life, milking cows in the German mountains, watching the waves crash on an Irish shore, listening to the wind sweep across the open plains. All of which I now realize has nothing to do with me. All of which has been lost over the past generations and the never ending, dehumanizing wars and the ongoing loss of heritage. War both creates and destroys history and thanks to it, I'm now simply American and clueless.
4 comments:
No specific word for cookie! What comes close?
Interesting thoughts on heritage. It is so much more common for people to speak multiple languages in other countries. History does lose something over time. I would say I have a mutt background, born in America ;)
As for working w/kids-it sounds like you have it down already. Kids are very funny creatures, funny ha ha and a little funny bizarre mixed in.
Wow reading about you working with kids made me have a flash back to working at the rec center! And how I used to just pat the kids on the shoulder and then smile and nod because I didn't want to answer their never-ending questions. :)
By the way Sean says "Hola Chica!"
I remember my mom telling me how they all spoke German until WWII. When she started school all she spoke was German. I felt uncomfortable when I was young telling people I was full German. Later I found out there are so many famous and accomplished Germans and the typical German family was against the war that now I'm proud to have my heritage as German. It was your Great Grandparents on both my mom and dad's side of the family that came to America. I wish I had taken German in college instead of French but French was the only foreign language offered at my HS so the path was set. I think most people here think of themselves as Americans. I know I do, even though I used to think what life would have been like growing up in Germany. Have fun with the kidos. Hugs, Hugs, Hugs, Love, Mom
That's why I wanted to learn about some viking history in Dublin, I've got no clue about my Scandanavian heritage, and I get off easy on the other bits because I'm an English mutt. And the pilgrims spoke English. :p
Ace
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