I. How to speak
II. Movement
III. The powers of bigass headphones
I. I've noticed something weird. There are some students at school who quite literally have no language. The situation is this: they come from immigrant families and speak, for example, Russian at home. But the rest of the time they speak German with their friends and in school. The weird part? They start forgetting Russian, because as teenagers they barely talk to their parents, and at the dinner table or in the house they don't tend to have lengthy discussions. How was your day, when are you babysitting your sister, all topics that more or less get repeated rather often. Then, they only know German through speaking it with friends and just through living in Germany, so often their German grammar is terrible and they don't know how to write, say, a formal academic essay about a book (and a lot of them don't have many books at home, either). Needless to say, some of these kids have horrible, horrible English skills, because they can barely handle school in German as it is. One girl barely speaks at all. This concept blows my mind: literally having no language. How do you express yourself at all? How do you even form a complete identity? What is happening inside the heads of these kids? I'm dying to know. Like I said, this completely throws my brain for a loop.
II. I was talking to Beate and Sandra, two of my colleagues. Beate asked me what I planned to do after I finish my work at the school and asked if I would go back to America. I replied that I don't really want to go back just yet, that I have so much I want to see and do while I'm young and mobile and unsettled. We started talking about why many Americans don't do that, why Americans seem to prefer not to travel extensively and often would rather stay put in one place, unlike Europeans, who seem to move around constantly (or at least travel regularly). I started thinking and came up with these reasons:
1. The US is massive and takes up half a continent, unlike Europe (imagine if every US state was an independent country? How weird would that be?). We've got Canada above us, where most of the people speak English, so if we need to move for a job within North America, we don't necessarily need any language other than English. And since people don't usually go or move to Mexico for work reasons, we're essentially pretty isolated in Anglophone-land. So the logic of many Americans is thus: Why learn French when I live in the middle of Nebraska? Europeans, on the other hand, often move to other countries for various periods of time, which makes being multi-lingual much more useful.
2. This is my homestead theory. I explained that, in the case of my family, nearly everyone lives in a thirty mile radius. My mom lived down the street as a kid, and the land around her parents' house is essentially divided amongst her and her siblings. So my parents built our house on a piece of land with a lot of family history attached to it. Over the years, my parents have invested money and energy into our home, gradually adding things like gardens, a porch, shed, greenhouse, patio, et cetera. When you've put so much into your home, you would, understandably, be less inclined to leave it. In contrast, many Europeans live in urban areas with apartments and seem to be generally more mobile, since space and costs don't usually allow for big homes you envision yourself.
So here's the homestead part: I think part of the whole existence of America depended on this vision that your family settles a piece of land and that becomes yours. You build your house and create your life there, and then your children inherit the land, and their children, and so on. Your whole family's identity rests on this piece of land that you've cultivated, and you're essentially rooted there. And so, in the history of America that's how our country grew, through people moving west and settling their little pie pieces and building their lives on that. And I think that became part of the American psyche, the desire for rootedness and the way your identity becomes tied to your homestead. Thus, less impulse to uproot and move and leave behind everything your family has created. Yes, there might be whole other worlds out there, but when you live in the proverbial land of milk and honey, you could very likely think: where could possibly have more to offer?
And of course you answer yourself with "nothing." At least that's the thought process I imagine has shaped the general reluctance of many Americans to move to places far from home. And if you can't bring yourself to move from Pennsylvania to, say, California, how would you ever handle moving to somewhere like Austria?
3. The obvious emotions of fear and anxiety. Throwing yourself into a foreign country when all you've ever known is rural America is perceived as not for the faint of heart. In reality, it's easier than that, but many people seem to have a real fear of leaving behind everything they know for an unknown world. But that's exactly why people need to travel: you go to said unknown world and you realize that it isn't so different. Different languages and cultures, yeah, but you gain a distinctly new understanding of humanity. And the result is that you appreciate it more. I would like to believe that this appreciation could help people learn how to do one apparently not-so-simple thing: chill the hell out, man.
4. Another smallish but obvious reason: lack of opportunity (travel=money).
All that said, I think I'm going to ponder this subject in more detail and maybe write a more coherent explanation. But I wanted to get this down so I can at least have a reference point.
Anyway, Beate bets that I'll travel for six years or so and then go back to America for good. We'll see if she's right. I had to explain that the neatest thing about being in Hamburg is that every single day I learn something new or see something I haven't seen before. It makes me thirsty to know what else I can stuff into my head. And I think that means that I won't be satisfied being in tiny little Bath, PA forever. Sorry, family.
Beate looked at me curiously when I said that I don't think of Hamburg as home. No matter how much I travel, I still need a reference point that I can always go back to. And, despite its sooty houses and gas stations and lack of public transportation, I'm gonna have to vote for Bath on that one.
Well, that was quite a load, so I'll save my music part for another day :)
