So, wisselvallig it is, but vandaag is het niet.
Arrgh. I get all mixed up when I come home from Dutch class.
The biggest problem I am having with speaking Dutch is not speaking Dutch. That is, I can already speak fairly well and the more I attend class, naturally, the better it gets. I am not worried about my ability to speak Dutch. What I worry about is my WILL. Going to class five days a week is instilling in me a kind of language resentment which I did not expect to encounter. I LIKE English. I am really GOOD at English. I can say exactly what I mean, and I even feel like I have COMMAND of this language. Granted, I only started Dutch class a few weeks ago, so maybe it's just the early mornings combined with the 40 minute bike ride to get there, to which I am not really accustomed, in spite of skating. Well, the bike ride is not going to last long, I can guarantee, because the weather is becoming bracingly cold in the early morning and I can't be bothered to push myself out into that kind of weather on a bicycle, no matter how buttoned up I get, so the bus and I are about to get acquainted.
But anyway, now that my Dutch is better it's also possible that I'm just harder on myself for the mistakes that I make. Upon first arrival here I would pluck out any applicable words I knew and string them together in the hopes of making sense. Now I'm struggling with more nuanced phrasing and the problem of switching back and forth between languages for different parts of the day. It's literally hard to think in English when I leave class. And then it's hard to think in Dutch when I've spent the whole night before writing assignments in English for my graduate program.
There is a Chinese girl in my class with whom I was speaking in English during a break from class. She kept mixing up her Dutch and English, and while her mistakes made perfect sense to me, I am sure it is hard for other people to understand her. And now this is what is happening with my Dutch and my Spanish.
I am sure I just need to practice more Spanish. I understand everything, as always, but it's much harder for me to speak than it was before I started learning Dutch. It's frustrating, because Spanish is also my mother tongue. Granted, I used it far less than English and it was never all that great (like many other Spanish-speaking Americans of Latin American descent), but now it's degraded, to my chagrin.
The good news that comes from this is that, living in Belgium and with a romance language already under my belt, it has opened up the door for me to learn French quite easily. I can already understand a lot of written French, and the more I listen, the more I understand. I can even parse together some simple sentences now, and this is without having studied anything. So, I am optimistic about my future French, and although I am concentrating on the Dutch now, I think it's something for me to learn next year. L'anne prochaine.
So it turns out I am doing quite fine with learning all the things there are to know if one wants to assimilate into Belgian culture. Well, perhaps "assimilate" is not the right word. Yes, I want to learn what I need to learn in order to be successful here. I want to speak the languages (plural!) and understand the part of the cultural iceberg that lies beneath the surface. That's all fine. But I also want to continue to be myself. There is only so much changing a person can do without feeling like he or she is giving up his or her own identity. Sure, identity changes over time. But some things will last my whole life, like my appreciation for good old American sarcastic humor, naturalistic gardens (what's with every plant around here being espaliered and trimmed and otherwise whipped into submission?), warm hello's and nice to meet you's, big smiles and of course, American breakfast!
Opening a diner still might not be such a bad idea, after all. The bottomless coffee mugs alone would astound the people in this country.
Anyway, as always, thanks for reading. I'm gonna go skate now. WHEEEEEEEEEEEE!
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