If you could eliminate the biggest source of stress from your life, how would your life be different?
A while ago, I heard about a couple of volunteers who received a score of Superior on their language tests at Mid Service Training. Superior is the highest ranking you can get, indicating a nearly undetectable accent, impeccable grammar, huge vocabulary and the ability to understand everything said in a natural, free flowing and rapid conversation. All of this at MST, the half way mark of service. As I keep my goal set high on a score of Advanced Low for my Close of Service test three months from now, I can't help but wonder what it must be like for those volunteers. How different my daily life would be if I didn't have to plan phone call conversations in my head before dialing, if I didn't have to use Google Translate on a daily basis, if I could understand every single conversation going on around me, if I could converse naturally with my coworkers, if I could confidently go into every store knowing the terms for exactly what I wanted, if I didn't have to rely on an English explanation for all the "advanced" stuff. What would the difficult part of my day be, then, if I could do all of these things? If I could eliminate the stress of sucking at both Romanian and Hungarian from my life, what other worries and inadequacies would occupy my mind? I can't even imagine anymore what it would be like to live in a foreign country and speak the local language fluently. I used to think it'd be simple. "How can you live in a country for two years and not learn the local language? That's ridiculous." My, how wrong I was. Why can't my daily battle be negotiating fair vegetable prices at the piatza instead of trying to remember the word for pumpkin? After a year and a half, I feel suddenly anxious to have this nagging worry out of my life. I wish I could eliminate it by being at the Superior level, but it seems that I am mentally incapable of accomplishing that. For shame.
I'm gonna go eat a slice of carrot cake now. Phooey.
3 comments:
Insightful! My Spanish is pretty good and I'm probably about to be sent to Latin America, maybe I'll get to see firsthand how weird it is to be in a foreign country and speak the language. I hadn't thought about this before, but I guess in some ways not speaking the language insulates you.
i hear you....
but i do think you are being way too hard on yourself.
it seems to me everyones experience is different and it is layered and complex - language is but one part....i totally admire what you are doing -
i think for me - spanish, german, french would be eaier and more familial (sp?)...i have taken spanish 1 at least three times....i do think emersion would really only be the way i could learn. thanks for your thought, words & blog
peace
leigh
(cousin)
I forgot to mention when we skyped that the lady who cuts my hair was from Germany. When she heard you had learned to communicate in Romanian (Erin I was there and you communicate great)she said that is one of the hardest languages and when I mentioned you had to deal with Hungarian too she said that is an impossible language to learn. You are way too hard on yourself. Love, Mom & Ozzie
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