Free at Last!

I passed my language exam. It was oddly anti-climactic. Rather than doing cartwheels, I slipped into a semi-catatonic state. After 10 months of one-on-one language training, I was too exhausted to be excited.

Now that a couple nights have passed, the relief is bubbling up to the surface. I went out last night and didn't take flashcards with me. I'm no longer translating conversations in my head just for practice. I don't have to be at FSI at 7:30 Monday morning. It feels really good. Finally.

In fact, the last time I felt this good was when I dropped off my 20 pound kevlar vest at the airport in Amman for the very last time.

The Home Stretch

There's a scene in the film The Mummy where sleazy Benny encounters the wretched mummy for the first time. As the mummy moves closer, Benny shakily pulls out a cross pendant from around his neck and starts reciting a prayer from the bible. Seeing that the mummy isn't impressed, he pulls out a huge collection of diverse religious pendants and holds them up one by one, hoping one of them will stop the mummy in its tracks.

That's how I feel now. I'll pray to any god to get me through the last 3 weeks of language training. I'm open to anything to keep the frustration at bay. I've tried yoga and kickboxing. I may start putting a shot of vodka in my orange juice in the morning. Or Xanax.

Language training is all about sucking. It's just a matter of degrees. You will never be a native speaker/reader of the language you're studying, so you will always suck to some degree. So each day in training is an analysis of how much you suck that day. I'm tired of sucking. I wonder how much vodka I'll need to get through 3 weeks.

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.