Great Aunt Mildred, Let's Just Eat Turkey and Talk about Something Else

   In the car on the way home for Thanksgiving break, I got the chance to talk to my cousin Jim, on the phone; one of my aunts drove all the way from High Point, North Carolina to Blacksburg, Virginia to pick him up! Jim is an engineering graduate student at Virginia Tech, and he was at my aunt’s house watching TV when I called. He is very dry and doesn't really speak unless spoken to, more out of disinterest than anything else. However, we have pretty good conversations. Having little news to actually tell him, I mentioned one of my assignments for the break. I said to him, over the phone, “The prompt is, I have this crazy Great Aunt Mildred who’s cornered me into answering this question: so, what is your major and what are you going to do with it?”

“Sounds like an interesting subject,” he replied.  

My mom was driving, and I was sitting next to her, so of course she overheard my half of the conversation, and wanted to input her opinion on the matter. After I hung up, we talked about her choice to become an engineer. She never changed her major, mainly because the school she attended had laid out the career path for her. Though she had not known what being an engineer entailed, she knew from the get-go that she wanted to be a chemical engineering major. She knows that I am not doing well in chemistry, and she doesn’t care. She said to me, “You want to be an English, French, Art major? I can see that. It fits you. What you are going to do with that major, though, is what I guess you are supposed to figure out. If you wanted to pair it, business is pretty popular, and it’s practical… but you don’t necessarily have to get a business degree. I wonder what other things you can do with a French major.”

After a few hours, my mom and I got home, ate dinner, lounged around for a bit, and watched The Voice together. It is my mom’s favorite show. Dad changed the channel after the show was over, and Mom announced that she was going to bed. However, before she went to bed, she did that annoying, useless thing that everyone who wants to know what my major is and what I am going to do with it does: she starts making suggestions. In fact, she made a point, as she was leaving the room, to get out The Book of Majors, a 1,300-page College Board encyclopedia whose index is longer than its content, and tried to hand it to me. “Mom,” I groaned, “Stop.” She replied excitedly, “Honey, just look at it! You might find some good career paths in this book for the majors you’re looking at.”

I haven’t yet looked at the book she pulled out for me. I don’t really want to. I didn’t touch it all week. There are so few options, and yet so many options. It is more overwhelming than going shopping, or applying to colleges. Too much to think about. 

The next day, my cousin Jim came over, and he and I went for a walk on Thanksgiving Day. While we were walking, Jim reminded me about that assignment that I had brought up, and what I was going to say to Great Aunt Mildred, if we had one, on Friday. Friday is when my family really celebrates Thanksgiving; everyone celebrates with the other side of the family on Thursday, and then my mom’s family’s Thanksgiving takes place the day after. I asked Jim if he had decided on a major, and what he wanted to do with it. I immediately realized that the first part of my question was kind of a dumb thing to ask, seeing as Jim was a grad student, but he answered me anyway.

“Well, obviously engineering is what I’m majoring in. As for what I’m going to do with it, well, I don’t know that yet... What about you? Maybe you should come up with some possible major for crazy Great Aunt Mildred.”

“Hmm… Let’s come up with the wackiest combination possible. Maybe I should get a degree in marine biology, and one in physical therapy, with a minor in Southern folklore.”

“So… you’re going to give whales physical therapy and tell them folk tales?” 

I laughed. “I guess so! They might not like Southern folklore very much, though… They’ll probably try to thwack me with their tails. With their whale tails. They probably like whale tales better anyway. Too bad that I won’t have covered that in my degree.”

It was either that or a combination of women’s studies and astrophysics. Anything to confuse the heck out of Great Aunt Millie dearest. How in the world could you combine women’s studies and astrophysics? As a job? Come on. I knew I was avoiding the question by coming up with these ridiculous responses, but it wasn’t something I thought I was ready to answer. Until now, my education has been really broad. How could I possibly narrow down what I want to do with my life to one or two degrees, and a job to accompany it? In that respect, the question “What is your major, and what do you plan to do with it?” is somewhat unfair. Having been in college for a semester now, I can at least say what I don’t want to do: biology. Music theory. Geology. Yuck.

http://f.kulfoto.com/pic/0001/0055/5WLHK54044.jpg

Thanksgiving was a fairly boring day. Since there was nothing to do until Friday, in addition to the walk on Thanksgiving, I went for a run. I ran by myself for most of the run, so, for once, I decided to listen to some podcasts while I was running. Listening to Freakonomics Radio talk about various studies that tested the best ways to alleviate poverty made me remember just how much I love public radio, and how infrequently I listen to it now that I have no car in which to listen to it and no extra time anyway. It also reminded me that I want to do something important and meaningful, with both my college career and anything beyond it. Maybe I should pursue a career in communications or reporting on the radio.

Perhaps one of my favorite radio shows on NPR, aside from Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! and A Prairie Home Companion

Image URL: http://media.wnyc.org/media/photologue/photos/freakonomics.jpg

Here's the link to Freakonomics Radio online: http://freakonomics.com/tag/freakonomics-podcast/

Even then, with this goal in mind, how would I explain to my relatives that I wanted to pursue a degree in communications and become a radio host, having never explicitly expressed any interest in this nor making any attempt to produce podcasts or videos? Would they understand that, even though I had never done it before, never tried, that it could be a good fit for me? Up to this point, my goals have been relatively short-term. I know I want to study abroad, possibly twice, and I want to make some sort of difference. That’s a vague thing to say, “I want to make a difference,” but I think it is important to stay updated on current events, and pose new solutions to old problems. I want the work I do to be not only enjoyable but meaningful. If I could work for NPR, I would be a very happy person. Not only would I be informing people of current events and issues, but I would be hearing myself talk. I love hearing myself talk, and I love hearing intelligent, thought-provoking words coming out my mouth. I just have to be brave enough to break away from what I have always done and try something new.

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On the Friday after Thanksgiving, I was surprised to find that my relatives did not care what my major was going to be, or what I was going to do with it. Nothing about the future at all! We chatted and played card games, ate turkey, and watched The Incredibles for the umpteenth time. It was fun. This would have been one of those holidays, I guess, that "Great Aunt Mildred couldn't make it because she was spending time with her son's in-laws," so I wouldn't have had to worry about facing her. I wouldn't have to face myself.

 The only questions my relatives asked me about college were whether I was enjoying myself, and what my favorite class was.  “Yes” and “English or French” were my go-to answers. “Not Chemistry.”

Me and my cousin studying in the living room.

Visiting Stamford Bridge

The path to Stamford Bridge, home to Chelsea Football Club, is easily the creepiest one I've ever taken.

 It required walking through a cemetery. An enormous cemetery. It required a one or two kilometer walk. Through a cemetery. And my friend and I got lost while walking through it. It never seemed to end!

 The graves there were really old. Whoever was buried here mustn't have been dead anymore. It seems they needed some more space, so they broke out.

 We could see the edge of Stamford Bridge about midway through the cemetery, so we knew we were going in the right direction. However, we got lost finding the cemetery gates- and there were only two total. Walking around the cemetery was becoming a little freaky.

 Finally, we found the entrance to Stamford Bridge!

 We got to visit the players' locker room! And all their jerseys were hanging on display! I learned that all the players receive two jerseys per game:  one for wearing and one for trading with the other team. Also, the players are all assigned to lockers next to someone from their home region, if one exists, so they can communicate with each other. Eventually, I guess they learn to speak English a little better.

 We got some really great views of the stadium, too!

Photos taken early July 2013.

Curiosities of Learning and Speaking Foreign Languages

              I recently traveled to Germany and to Lebanon to visit my relatives (summer 2012). In Friedberg, Germany, we visited my dad's cousin Ramzi and his wife Heike for a few days. I spoke no German, none at all. The only words I could say with certainty are "Guten morgen! Bitte! Danke! Ein, Svei, Drei! Frankfurter!" Luckily for me, Ramzi and Heike could speak English with ease. It was evident in Heike's schooling, though, that German schools (or at least the one she attended, many years ago) taught a less idiomatic and more literal translation of English to the students: Heike would say something like, "Once, I have been to Brazil, and while I am at the airport a man is approaching me..." The tenses are uneven—so what? It is easier in other languages to tell stories in the present tense because they do not need to use past participles—and the wording is idiosyncratic, off-kilter, though the meaning she meant to convey was understood. "Once, I went to Brazil, and while I was at the airport a man approached me..." 
              While in Germany, I remained mostly silent, in shopping places, in restaurants, tourist areas, because I did not know enough German to string together a sentence. It is far less embarrassing to not speak to people than to reveal that you are visiting their country have not learned their language. I remember my French teacher telling me that any attempt to communicate in a foreign language is more appreciated than to only speak to someone in the one you know. It shows you have not even tried to learn the other language. In retrospect, I should have tried to use what little German I knew instead of remaining silent.
                 Learning a new language while in a foreign country is like being a feral child. Feral children are children found in the wild, and act like the animals around them. People can bring the feral children into society with success, as the children understand emotion and relate to other human beings on an emotional level, but there is a critical time frame in to the mastery of language must conform. Feral children can learn lots of words throughout their lives, but most are too old to learn the concepts of sentences and grammar at the pace that ordinary children learn (Aplan). Words can just be funny sounds to them rather than specific way to communicate. In this way, I learned many new words—for instance, I can tell you that a hautbahnhof is a train station, a raised rail platform, and kuchen means cake—but I could not use these words in a coherent sentence; I can neither tell nor ask in German how to get to Ramzi and Heike's house from the hautbahnhof, nor would I understand a German response except for the body language that reinforced it.* When you learn a language at such a primitive level, you never learn useful verbs.

               Similarly, speaking with another person in a foreign language, one that you have only practiced in a classroom, is like trying to play a song and realizing that you did not practice enough, because the rest of the orchestra is playing faster than you are and you can only catch one or two notes per measure. The same goes for the ability to hear the nuances of the foreign language that you are speaking. In Lebanon, I tried speaking in French with my cousins Yasmina, Samy, and Ghia. I could hear the words in the sentences the spoke and understood what they meant, but I had to ask them to repeat what they had said because I could not compute as quickly as they spoke except for the last parts of the sentences.
"...-pose?" Asked my cousin Ghia. We were on a family walk, and my cousin Yasmina and I were jogging ahead.

"Quoi?" I responded, not expecting the question and not catching what she had said, though I recognized that it was in French.

"On se repose?" She asked again. 

Oh. She wanted to rest. "Non. Euh, nous allons courir à... à l'arbre là. Tu te repose si tu veux." In a response, it feels easier, to me, to repeat the words from the question because they are your grappling hook, the thing that helps you climb up the wall of the language barrier that keeps you from hearing and understanding what was said the first time.

               I would like to call the following hypothesis the American Traveler's Paradox, though its truth is (very) limited: if an ostensibly American person travels out of the country, the people he encounters will assume that English is the only language he speaks, so that is what they try to speak to him. Conversely, if an ostensibly American person travels out of the country, he will assume that the people he is likely to encounter, such as a hotel clerk or airport customs officer, will speak English. This is what I encountered during my stay in Lebanon. I did not know enough Arabic to carry on a conversation past greetings, but I do know enough French to do so. I told relatives who I noticed speaking French past "bonjour" and "merci"** that I understood French, in French, and they still spoke to me in English. Also, as a corollary to the paradox, if a foreigner comes to the United States, the American will assume that the foreigner speaks English, and will speak English to the foreigner. Of course, there are many more reasons for people wanting to speak to Americans in English, or Americans wanting to speak in English instead of another language that they know (and not all foreigners who come to the US speak English, etc.), that refute this paradox, but it is nonetheless an interesting hypothesis. It is just based on my observations from that vacation.

             On the flight from Frankfurt am Main to Washington, D.C., I sat next to a black woman, African or Carribean I could not decipher. Irrelevant, in any case, where she was from. I smiled and said hello to her, and she returned the nod and a small smile, but not the "hello." She was silent, and I knew from employing the same silence in this kind of case that she did not speak English, or not much beyond "yes," "no," and  "toilets?" She had experienced that same silence as I had, that fear of being perceived as different or inadequate, just being tired of needing help communicating. It can be frustrating and it can make you want to give up any efforts to speak in someone else's tongue.


*If you can't tell, I just recently watched this documentary (July 2012).
**Lebanon was occupied by France before it became an independent nation, so most schools teach the language and many people still use French phrases instead of certain Arabic ones, like merci instead of shokran (شكراً). My cousins speak fluent French, English, and Arabic.

Third and final note: I originally wrote this blog post a year and a half ago, but never published it. I never really finished it, because I didn't think I had addressed counter arguments well enough. I kept the content of this article the same, even though I feel a bit differently about it now than I did at the time. I cited the feral children documentary that I watched, though it now comes from a different source than before. I might write a reflection/response to this post soon! Having traveled a little more and become much more fluent in some foreign languages, I have a different perspective on language than I did before.


Aplan, Rick. "Wild Child: The Story Of Feral Children." YouTube. YouTube, 30 June 2013. Web. 26 Nov. 2013.