What my journal tells me...

As I successfully headed of an analysis of the evolution of my journal in my last post, I thought I would use a new post to delve a little deeper into how my journal works. I was taking a closer look at my earlier entries to figure out exactly what I was going to post and it occurred to me how accurately my journal reflects the progression of my exchange year. I'm not sure how well I can explain it but I'm going to try.

First off: When I arrived in Germany, I started off writing in as much German as I possibly could (although that was not really that much and it took a LOT longer than just writing in English). Actually, the entries were mostly English with new words and phrases I had learned thrown in for practice. I also attempted to number the days when I wrote, a habit I gave up on after an impressive seven days. I'd say the language thing shows how genuinely motivated new exchange students are to learn the language, integrate, and have a successful year even when they feel unprepared and a little bit lost. Going along with the feeling of being lost, the numbered days and the fact that my first entries were detailed accounts of pretty much every minute of everyday shows that I was trying to find order and normality in my new situation and I was holding to the YFU Exchange Student Handbook (this doesn't really exist) that advises exchange students to take the year one day at a time. You can also tell how much free time I had because of the amount I wrote. These entries also took the form of a monologue. I used the journal to write things out and organize my thoughts, trying to get my head around everything that I was experiencing in the beginning of the year.

Slowly, slowly, the German disappears and my entries become shorter collections of sentence fragments that really wouldn't be decipherable for anyone except for myself. This is a time where every moment of exchange wasn't the amazingly exciting. I wrote so I would be able to remember everything but the time I was spending on the composition of journal entries was minimal. I still had the will to write and record what I was doing but I no longer was motivated enough to figure out everything in German. The fact that I stopped writing in a monologue-style and switched to just listing events and actions shows that I was finding my way better than before. I was learning new things all the time but my brain was no longer overloaded from the whole exchange experience.

Then, a funny thing happened; German started working its way back into my writing but not because I was newly inspired to translate everything. My brain simply started to work in a language somewhere between English and German. Writing really brought out the best of my Denglish. When you think, you don't have to commit to one language because, obviously, your thoughts are just for you and your brain just thinks in whatever language comes easiest. I also didn't have to make a choice when speaking in my daily life because it was clearly assumed that I would be speaking German. However, while writing a text that is only for me, I did have a choose if I was going to write down the thoughts in my head in German or in English. It's funny to read the entries from this transition time for me because the couple of weeks that I was really struggling to choose one language per day seem obvious to me. I wanted to keep the two languages separate because that's how I thought it should work but my brain didn't agree. Eventually, I just embraced the Denglish and writing became easy again.

This was the part of my exchange where my life in Germany was no longer just my exchange life, but actually becoming a part of me. The flight here and adjustment time were no longer so fresh in my mind and my activities, responsibilities, and problems here were starting to push thoughts of Uni, basketball season, and college to the back of my mind. Just like with my writing, I had to figure out that going with the flow was the best strategy to successfully get through this phase and that the balance between my two lives would continue to change and eventually (hopefully) balance itself out.

And lo and behold, it did. As I learned more German and got better at using it, it was easy and totally natural to just sit down and write in German. Not only is it good practice, but it's also how my memories exist in my mind; they're my Germany memories in German. So actually, my journal hasn't just helped to preserve my memories of what I've done this year but I've also somewhat accidentally recorded my language progression and how exactly how I merged my two worlds. My journal is now almost entirely in German, just like my life. :)

I'm Back to Blogging!

Hey, there! Seeing as the my last post on this blog was entitled, "Herbstferien Adventures" and never even made it past the draft-phase, I feel like this post should start off with a brief explanation for my absence. There are two main factors that caused the blog post shortage, the first being a problem with content and the second being language struggles. However, since I am now well over halfway done with my time in Germany, I am going to attempt to combat these two problems in the next months and continue to post here for the remainder of my exchange year.

Now, when I say I ran into a "content problem" shortly after the end of Fall Break, I don't mean that at that point I stopped doing things with my life and therefore had absolutely nothing to write about. Actually, I wrote quite a lot in the late fall but the subjects of my writing weren't really what I was looking to post and share with others. At the point at which I stopped writing on my blog, I had already been living in Norderstedt a couple months and was successfully settling into and Alltag routine. I was still meeting tons of new people all the time and struggling to understand the German that surrounded me, but I had a schedule and I had a routine. At this point in my exchange, my writing fell into three general genres:

1) GERMAN PRACTICE- In terms of content, this "genre" is very, very broad. Pretty much the only commonality that ties these pieces together is that they are in German. The motivation behind this category was simply to be thinking/practicing/producing more German. So when I had a free moment, I'd sit down and write SOMETHING in Germans, a vignette, a story, a journal entry, basically anything that came into my mind. It was a good way to express myself in German and see what I had the vocabulary to say and what vocab I lacked in a low pressure situation where I could look up the words I needed. I thought that these would be fun to go back and read later in the year to see how my German improved... Turns out, they actually just make me cringe more than anything else at the weird topics I chose and my horrible grammar. I'm hoping with time I will find them more endearing...

2) OBLIGATORY JOURNAL ENTRIES- I successfully have a journal entry for everyday of my exchange year. The quality and detail varies immensely, as sometimes I'm very motivated to record my life and sometimes there are things I would just rather forget... My journal started out in my broken German waaaayyy back in August when I, being the good, motivated exchange student that I was, wanted to use every possible second to practice and improve my German. In the beginning, I even noted some new words I'd learn everyday and my Happy/Crappy (Camp T <3). Then after a while, this became tedious and I switched to English so I could quickly scribble out an outline of my day and go to bed quickly. But what is really interesting is that at some point, I started writing my journal entries in "Denglish" simply because that's how my brain was working. (I feel like I need a separate blog post for this analysis...) Now, I write almost exclusively in German with a day here and there in Spanish.

3) EXCHANGEY THINGS- This is not an interesting genre. Exchangey things were notes I took at seminars, questions I needed to ask my Betreuerin, or lists of things to do. I also still have some plans for blog posts I never wrote... Goal: keep some order in my life.

 So clearly, there was writing happening... just not here. I also didn't really want to post that much daily life stuff or chilling with friends because I find that content better suited for a journal than the internet. Yes, I could/should have posted some stuff about the cool big events in my life here (trip to Amsterdam/Vienna/Bremen/Luebeck/Munich, 50th Anniversary of my hostfamily's family business, birthdays, concerts etc.), but at this point the second problem comes into play.

If you have never completely immersed yourself in another language for an extended period of time, you cannot understand what happens to your brain. I first found blog writing becoming a chore as I noticed how the amount of English that I used in a day, severely affected my German. I really wanted to learn as much and as fast as I could so I thought a break from blogging would help. I considered starting to write in German but quickly decided that to be a terrible idea as 1) my German was NOT sufficient to write entertainingly, 2) everyone who reads this can speak English but you can't all necessarily speak German, and 3) I was/am not ready to post my mistake-filled German for people to read. Then, as I became more comfortable with the language and decided to revisit my blog, I found myself struggling to write in English. I know. It sounds silly to say that you can "unlearn" your first language but you definitely can. This doesn't mean I was perfectly fluent in German. This just means that as I was writing, I wouldn't be able to think of the words I needed in English, but rather in German or I'd write a sentence with English words but use German sentence structure. (Again. Separate blog post needed.) I had a very hard time finding a coherent voice when writing in English and found the experience of just being mediocre in two languages very stressful. I abandoned my blog again out of frustration.

The fact that I've returned to my blog does not mean that this problem has disappeared, on the contrary actually, but it does mean that I'm slowly realizing that in three very, very, very short months I will be going back to the US and then in ~4-5 months starting at college and at some point I have to articulate myself in another language again. I've also realized what a different perspective I have now on the year being almost through rather than right at the beginning and that I actually have things I do want to say now while I have this world fresh on the brain. So hopefully, I can keep up with this and successfully work posting into my schedule so that I can share my last months of this crazy year and reflect a bit.