One thing they mentioned at the start of this trip is how an experience like this can truly be a life changing trip, and in many ways. Well I'm starting into the 'getting to know yourself' phase. This whole Deutsch lernen thing has been pretty stressful and frustrating, and that with some other things would be a whole helluva lot easier if I had one personal trait in my repertoire.
Anyone who knows me well has probably seen it come forward at some point or another. I am normally not a very patient fellow. Sometimes it can be good (that or I'm just trying to soften a big personal flaw). But recently it has been a hinderance to a few different things that should probably be a non-issue. But nooOOOOOoo. I gotta make things hard on myself for no good reason.
First off is my impatience with people. I think I've known this for a while, but when I find someone annoying or they rub me the wrong way, I become extremely impatient with them. This is becoming a problem for me because a) it leads to pointless worrying, intolerance, and unneeded stress in my day and b) can affect my total demeanor thereby leading to bad mojo going around. Stupid, pointless, unneeded anger that should not be there in the first place. Gotta learn to be more forgiving, less worried and bothered, and be more accepting of other people. I'm not sure how I got so egocentric on stuff like this, but is completely unnecessary, especially because I'm probably as much, if not more annoying, than everyone around me. So if I can't take it, I sure as hell shouldn't be dishing it out. I learned that a helluva long time ago and my concrete skull still hasn't put it into play.
Second is my impatience related to trying to learn this Deutsch that constantly escapes me. And it is not only impatience, but my desire to not make others impatient. What I mean by that is my aversion of confrontation/not wanting to annoy people. In the times that I do get to speaking Deutsch, I rush myself 90% of the time in an effort to keep speaking and get my point across to the other person that I end up making a ton of mistakes (structurally and phonetically) that hinder any progress in learning this. For this I gotta slow down. (I know Mom, I know...) I've got to take my time, enunciate, make sure I'm pronouncing each word correctly, and not rush myself through sentences. But rather, I should calmly and collectively say what I am trying to say in an effort to slowly build up my proficiency of the language.
Impatience with people leads to unnecessary frustration and a poor attitude. Impatience when speaking leads to more mistakes and a longer learning period. Neither of these are going to help me out in any way throughout this year. So for those of you in my program, please call me out when any of this happens.
EDIT: I'm even getting to the point where I'm complaining to myself about how much slower the internet is here compared to the U.S. Impatience has become my new middle name, and I'm not exactly proud of it.
Update in my frisbee life here in Deutschland. Last Thursday at practice, I was asked to join the team at the German Club Nationals tournament next weekend. (WHAHAHAAAAAA?!?!?!?!) So I'm pretty pumped for that, as it should be a helluva time.
And this past weekend, I headed up to Travemünde, pretty close to Lübeck, for a beach tournament with a handful of Frisbee folk from Köln. It was a blast! The weather was ok (scattered showers and times of sunshine), the venue was gorgeous (I think I saw Denmark from the beach), there was tons of huge ships and ferries passing by the fields so I had something cool to gawk at every once in a while, and I got a TON of time to try and work on my German.
Most of the time it was me desperately trying to get a grasp of the conversation and ended up just picking out words that I recognized and being proud of myself for that. Other times it was me being puzzled at what people were saying just because it was so dang fast and I couldn't decipher where words ended and began. But there were a few times where I think I held a somewhat acceptable conversation!!! It was cool to try and keep working on this language, and if nothing else, I sure hope learning by osmosis is a real thing.
This weekend is going to be an absolute blast. All I'll say right now is it involves 3 other people, probably 4 (maybe 5) countries, a rental car, and a whole helluva lot of fun. Oh. Baby.
A small album from the frisbee tournament this weekend:
CBYX/PPP - 7 - Frisbee in TravemündeAlso, for those that are into viral videos, here's how you would say "ain't nobody got time for that" auf Deutsch: "Es gibt niemanden, der zeit dafür hat".
Original Publish Date: September 12th, 2013