A Collection of Anecdotes

I am super tired and don't have the brainpower to put together a coherent post, so here are a few stories from the past week or two:

After three hours of Korean, I am very happy to say that I can read pretty much everything in Korean. Of course, I can't understand anything that I read except for hello, my name, and sushi, but that's a start!

The Korean instructor loves pointing out my American accent. When I was identifying letters of the alphabet, she said, "Ha, you can already hear K's American accent at this stage!" This would be amusing if she pointed out the other students' German accents, but she doesn't... and even *I* can hear where their German accents sneak in. On the other hand, the instructor was impressed with my ability to pronounce the R/L sound; she says the American R is closer to the Korean R/L than the German R.

My German class highlights the fact that my speaking ability lags behind my writing ability. I took 18 months off German while I was focusing on English, which exacerbated the gap. To be fair, it might also just be a K-issue, because I have similar problems in English! On top of this, the professor only calls on me when I'm spacing out... and I'm pretty attentive in classes. Crap. I don't know how she does it.

A few weeks ago, Dumpling knocked on my door, handed me a bowl of grapes, and said, "Danke, dass du so gut auf mich aufpasst." (Rough translation: Thank you for babysitting me so well.) Awwww. When he's not a monster, he's oh-so-cute.

Some of my friends and I decided to check out a Halloween party that someone mentioned through the Fulbright listserv. Let's just say that you know a party is a dud when *I* walk out after two minutes because it's too boring.

It is very interesting to see how different people from different countries react to me being an Asian-American. My students (predominantly from the Middle East) asked, "Where are you really from?" A Russian teaching assistant did a double take when she heard me blabbing away in English and said, "You're speaking American English!" A Chinese teaching assistant said, "Excuse me for asking, but do you have Asian heritage?" (Heh. It's nice to hear an attempt at PCness, but come on.) Another American Fulbrighter asked, "Did you always know you were adopted?" (When I'm standing near my parents, I like to say that I got all of the recessive genes. My parents have brown hair and blue eyes.)

I'm getting annoyed with German bluntness. In some ways, it's great-- I don't expect one of my WG-mates to blow up over something trivial just because she has been waiting to tell me off for the past few months. No, most Germans wouldn't do that. Instead, they provide you with a running commentary of everything that you are doing wrong.

For example, one of my WG-mates told me that she couldn't tell that I cleaned and that since my mother probably did all of the cleaning at home (hello, sexism), I should watch and help her clean this weekend so I can learn how to do it the "right" way. This was after she stuck her head in the bathroom and told me that I was cleaning things in the wrong order. See, you can't mop the floor before you clean the sink and the tub. Clearly. I pulled a passive-aggressive move of my own: I showed up in her room with a piece of notebook paper and a pen and told her to give me explicit directions on what things to clean, which cleaning solutions to use, and in what order I should do everything. It still didn't get me out of "How to Clean the WG 101."

I also got a note that said, 'Please don't leave dishes in the sink.' I did not leave dishes in the sink. Don't blame the dumb American for all of your woes...

Yet another story: I wanted to make soup for dinner. I was poking through the kitchen and making a list of what I needed to buy, and the same WG-mate said, "I don't know if we've discussed this earlier, but you really shouldn't use things that other people have bought. For example, I bought this lettuce, and I am going to eat it for dinner, and if you use it, then I won't have my dinner." I agree to an extent, but my WG-mates ate almost everything that I bought during my last trip to the grocery store: both of my cucumbers, an apple, some of my broccoli, all of *my* lettuce, the last of my cheese, all but three of my organic potatoes, and even my frozen spinach. Hypocrite.

In other news, according to an informal survey of the Fulbrighters in Germany, 85% of us identify as moderate to very liberal, and 65.9% strongly disapprove of the Tea Party. Only 10% believe that the Republican party best represents their political leanings. Who's surprised? Not me!