Field Trip

This afternoon one of my instructors took me on a field trip to a shopping plaza that had several Indian stores to practice speaking Nepali about everyday things. I give my instructor brownie points for trying to do something different. But this was just painful.

I am anti-social. I don't do small talk. So you'll understand why 2 hours of chit chat in Nepali was excruciating.

In the Indian grocery store:

Instructor: Heatherji, look at all the different kinds of food. This store is very different from Giant, isn't it?

Me: Oh yes, what a large variety of food. It is very different from Giant.

Instructor: Look at these vegetables? Do you like green onions?

Me: Of course I like green onions.

At the Indian book store:

Instructor: Look, Heatherji, there are many books about the Hindu religion.

Me: I found a few books about Buddha.

Instructor: Look, here is a Nepali-English dictionary.

Me: How nice. But it is very expensive.

You get the idea. Meaningless small talk in English is annoying. Meaningless small talk in another language is brutal. The best part was trying some Samosa Chaat in a small Indian cafe. Yum!

So Tired

I realize I run the risk of sounding like the kind of whiny creep I usually despise, but oh well. I'm tired. And I'm bored.

For the past few months, my language training schedule has been -- An hour or more of conversational speaking. A speaking at length exercise and/or interview, with a critique. A reading in depth and an authentic reading exercise, with line-by-line analysis. Every day.

Every day it's the mentally exhausting equivalent of taking the dreaded test (without the emotional stress, fortunately). I'm tired. The strange thing is that I feel like I'm more advanced in Nepali now than I was when I reached a 3/3 in Romanian. But my instructors are making me feel like I still have a long way to go.

A little more than a month to go.

Straight or On the Rocks?

A strange thing happened in class today. I had a strong urge to drink a shot of whiskey. This is strange because A) I don't like whiskey, and B) it was 10:22 in the morning. "What happened at 10:22?" you might ask. I was in the middle of reading an in-depth Nepali article and it was at 10:22 that the futility of this task became more than I wanted to bear.

I just wasn't getting it and my instructor wasn't explaining it in English very well. I began counting down the minutes to the end of class at 10:40 (today was an abbreviated admin day). 18 painful minutes seemed like forever.

I keep telling my instructor that mimicking the in-depth reading exercise that is used in the test is not a good teaching tool. The test is meant to discover what you don't know. The classroom is for developing reading comprehension. But what do I know?

I'll take my whiskey straight, please.

Wait for Me!!!

While I'm slogging along in language training, interesting things are happening in Nepal. Our new ambassador arrived within the past week. A teenager from Big Bear is currently scaling Mt. Everest. My housing assignment has been made (is it really necessary to have "Pinky House" emblazoned on a bronze plaque outside my gate?).

And things are heating up politically. Journalists are being attacked. Nobody believes that a new constitution will be ready by next month's deadline. The Maoists have started military-style training of their youth cadres (and then they express disappointment that the US government won't take them off the terrorist list).

I guess the post-Baghdad adrenaline crash has affected my reasoning because all I can think of when I read about what's going on in Nepal is - "I hope they don't fix everything before I get there!"