Ice skating. An unlikely occasion to feel like the lime-green alien again who's just landed from Mars.
We've all had a go at some point. You know what I'm talking about, right? A huge indoor sports skating rink; queuing up to swap your shoes; blinding disco lights and pop music; edging your way white-knuckled around the ice rink, clinging to the wall as the 5-year olds zoom past at such a speed that you feel the full force of the Bernoulli principle. (Think: standing on a platform as the non-stop from Manchester to London thunders by and you'll get my drift.) And then just as you've got into the swing of not falling over, time's up and it's off to Maccie D's for a burger - or is that the famous "long chicken" here in Germany, I wonder...? (Just one of the many hilarious pseudo-anglicisms.)
Now let me explain what a German ice rink is all about.
Seeing the bright, all-weather lights and fenced-in rink as you stroll up to the entrance, you say to your friend A: "oh, so you mean the ice rink is outside..!" To which the reply is merely a quizzical look and an amused smile. So then you explain what skating in England is usually like which results in a few laughs – as always. Cue Sting: "I'm an alien, I'm a legal alien..."
Next you begin to scan the people around you, and the reality dawns that almost everyone has brought their own skates with them. And I mean super-duper Starlight Express ice skates. Sure you haven't just turned up to a mass audition for "Dancing on Ice"? Gulp.
Ticket paid and shoes stowed neatly away, you head out to the ice rink quaking with excitement, well, and the cold. But excitement soon dissipates into fear as, to your dismay, there's no wall around the ice rink! Take a deep breath. Don't let them smell your fear. "Err.. A, isn't there a wall I can maybe hold onto to help me around the first lap, or two? I mean, I haven't done this for a few years, but I'm sure I'll get the hang of it after like 10 minutes or so." Or so you hope to God. Of course, everyone else just hops onto the ice and scoots off like they do this every day. In no time at all the one-legged flamingos are gliding into pirouettes and hydroblading the curves. Have I just landed on another planet here?
Fortunately A is a patient woman so the little lady holds your hand around the first 2-3 laps as you roar and laugh away the fear together, using a smile to help you concentrate. A mix of hard rock and odd German pop – no disco here I'm afraid – spurs you strangely on. Now feeling slightly less like the little green alien from Mars, you decide to give backwards ice skating a try. A is a pretty good teacher and has a skating-pro for a brother. You're in pretty safe hands here.
Towards the end of a two-hour, high-powered Herausforderung, you make your happy but weary way to the locker room, mega proud of the fact that you didn't fall over even once! And perhaps feeling slightly more German than you did two hours before.
Bring on the pancake spins and lasso lifts.
Saturday 22 November 2014
Wednesday 8 October 2014
Autumn clean
As greens turn to golds and blazing reds I'm facing a new start in the city.
If you've been keeping up with my (not so frequent) blog entries, Facebook stalking me (you know who you are...), or perhaps, as one of my "real" friends, you've received the odd e-mail and old-fashioned letter from me then you'll know that I'm no longer working with UCCF. Once my Relay year finished, I left for what the Brits call "Europe" and have now been living in Germany for over a year working as a translator in Bavaria.
But times are a changin' and an autumn breeze is carrying me off to Munich. The rolling hills of the low country will soon be ironed out and a quiet, neighbourly village life will turn into a spaghetti of constant sound and anonymous bodies.
Because a new job means another move; a fairly welcome move, I might add, though not without a few tears before I actually up and leave. As I pack my life into a few boxes and a suitcase and scrounge around for odd bits of furniture, I'll no doubt have a few moments of panic swiftly followed by a little parental reassurance, albeit through What's App.
The change is a bit testing. I suppose change always is.Yet the way God has been teaching me patience over the last year as I've struggled to pray over the same things for several months has repeatedly shown me just how good and faithful He really is. And as He's rolled out surprise after surprise over the last few weeks during which I've joyfully witnessed His love (and His sense of humour) in clearly answering prayer, all I can do now is feel humbled and rejoice!
So stay tuned. You never know what might sneak its way onto this blog...
If you've been keeping up with my (not so frequent) blog entries, Facebook stalking me (you know who you are...), or perhaps, as one of my "real" friends, you've received the odd e-mail and old-fashioned letter from me then you'll know that I'm no longer working with UCCF. Once my Relay year finished, I left for what the Brits call "Europe" and have now been living in Germany for over a year working as a translator in Bavaria.
But times are a changin' and an autumn breeze is carrying me off to Munich. The rolling hills of the low country will soon be ironed out and a quiet, neighbourly village life will turn into a spaghetti of constant sound and anonymous bodies.
Because a new job means another move; a fairly welcome move, I might add, though not without a few tears before I actually up and leave. As I pack my life into a few boxes and a suitcase and scrounge around for odd bits of furniture, I'll no doubt have a few moments of panic swiftly followed by a little parental reassurance, albeit through What's App.
The change is a bit testing. I suppose change always is.Yet the way God has been teaching me patience over the last year as I've struggled to pray over the same things for several months has repeatedly shown me just how good and faithful He really is. And as He's rolled out surprise after surprise over the last few weeks during which I've joyfully witnessed His love (and His sense of humour) in clearly answering prayer, all I can do now is feel humbled and rejoice!
So stay tuned. You never know what might sneak its way onto this blog...
Sunday 9 February 2014
From fractures to fashioning
Or, 'have I ceased to exist?'
A good friend asked me whether I felt I was fracturing myself in German. Whether, it was disingenuous to speak words in a foreign tongue whose meaning was highly similar, yet still different to your own. Whether I felt less like 'me', since she felt less like 'her'.
Jein. (Yes and no)
At first, yes, it is like fracturing. Or it feels like your splintering all over, though it's not purely the words and phrases themselves, that is, what they mean, which make you feel broken. Even the machinations and sounds of the words feel corrupting at first. (And by 'at first', I don't necessarily mean just at school. I mean that first taste of what it's really like to live in that language, breathe it, eat it, work in it, befriend in it, play in it, feel the rain in it. You don't really know what language does to your identity until you lose the ability to understand and be understood.)
We are present in our words. Our identity is conveyed and shared through them. So yes, when you stumble through the initial stages of real language learning, you are being pulled apart, piece by splintered piece. You're being humbled.
But anyone who has been living in a foreign language long enough will, I hope, also admit that there comes a point where you stop fracturing, at least for a while, and start fashioning.
Our identity is also mutually fashioned by words, by meaning, context, culture -they are the air we breath out as well as in. Only, we are unaware of the effect foreign words are having on our 'self' when we first enter the foreign stage.
I used to think I was creating a 'German' Vicky. A disingenuous alter-ego; a phoney.
Now, it's more like I am 'both', not 'either, or'. How I express who I am and who I think myself to be are inextricably linked to the language I am thinking in and speaking. And yes, there are the difficulties of translation where something is always lost. But there is also so much more to be gained as you learn more and more.
Identity is flexible because it is non-reductive. It is made of more than one facet, more than one colour or shape or tongue. Instead of resigning myself to frustration, my reaction rather should be to embrace the new facet and integrate it as far as is possible into my identity.
So, jein. There is a real fracturing. But there is also fashioning: expansion and inclusion. There is real creative power here, where instead of ceasing to exist, you exist differently. You exist as a flexible, fluxing 'both'. A constant growing process. Where, yes. There is sometimes a little pain involved.
A good friend asked me whether I felt I was fracturing myself in German. Whether, it was disingenuous to speak words in a foreign tongue whose meaning was highly similar, yet still different to your own. Whether I felt less like 'me', since she felt less like 'her'.
Jein. (Yes and no)
At first, yes, it is like fracturing. Or it feels like your splintering all over, though it's not purely the words and phrases themselves, that is, what they mean, which make you feel broken. Even the machinations and sounds of the words feel corrupting at first. (And by 'at first', I don't necessarily mean just at school. I mean that first taste of what it's really like to live in that language, breathe it, eat it, work in it, befriend in it, play in it, feel the rain in it. You don't really know what language does to your identity until you lose the ability to understand and be understood.)
We are present in our words. Our identity is conveyed and shared through them. So yes, when you stumble through the initial stages of real language learning, you are being pulled apart, piece by splintered piece. You're being humbled.
But anyone who has been living in a foreign language long enough will, I hope, also admit that there comes a point where you stop fracturing, at least for a while, and start fashioning.
Our identity is also mutually fashioned by words, by meaning, context, culture -they are the air we breath out as well as in. Only, we are unaware of the effect foreign words are having on our 'self' when we first enter the foreign stage.
I used to think I was creating a 'German' Vicky. A disingenuous alter-ego; a phoney.
Now, it's more like I am 'both', not 'either, or'. How I express who I am and who I think myself to be are inextricably linked to the language I am thinking in and speaking. And yes, there are the difficulties of translation where something is always lost. But there is also so much more to be gained as you learn more and more.
Identity is flexible because it is non-reductive. It is made of more than one facet, more than one colour or shape or tongue. Instead of resigning myself to frustration, my reaction rather should be to embrace the new facet and integrate it as far as is possible into my identity.
So, jein. There is a real fracturing. But there is also fashioning: expansion and inclusion. There is real creative power here, where instead of ceasing to exist, you exist differently. You exist as a flexible, fluxing 'both'. A constant growing process. Where, yes. There is sometimes a little pain involved.
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