7 posts tagged “language”

Literary Quote of the Day says:
If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for the Creator, there is no poverty.
Ranier Maria Rilke, German-language Poet

Literary quotes of the day are like my bible verses, writers are my prophets. I have to agree with Rilke here. I often complain that I am bored but if I try to be creative, I can find something to enjoy, something to think about, something to write about. Even if I have nothing else, I always have my mind and my ability to create. I am my own god!

Read an article about the correlation between Living Abroad and Creativity. Apparently people who have lived abroad in their lives have a tendency to be more creative. In the comments section, people were talking about language and how learning a second language also opens up your consciousness. I would definitely agree, using a different language allows a person to describe the world and himself, to view the world and himself, in a different way. Because of the way every language chooses to name some things (emotions, objects, characteristics) and not others, because of the way some things are emphasised in one language and not in another, you get a different world view. I think it is very valuable, almost as valuable as living abroad. The two together are probably the best way to go... :p

In other news, I bought a couple pounds of cherries. Very delicious and almost finished. :)

I have only 23 days left. 22 not counting today... Basically three weeks until I get to leave to Japan! So many things are still up in the air, many exams to take, many papers to write. Gotta focus!

I have 5-6 weeks before I leave this country and my entire university world. There is so much I need to get done before my June 13th flight at 9 in the morning. When I am in Japan, I will be disconnected from my university life, and I need to be prepared to jump right into fall quarter when I come back because I return the day before classes begin.

Things to do:

1. Get a visa for Vietnam, I need to paste a photo onto the application and I have no glue! I need to get a money order too, 65 dollars.
   
2. Get my hair reconditioned, that will take an entire day and cost quite a bit of money.
3. Figure out where I am going to rent storage space for the summer. Later on, I will spend a day (probably in the middle of final exam week) to move all my junk (books and glass bottles and tons of clothes) into storage. Fun. Will probably cost me a pretty penny too.
4. Teach myself standard Arabic grammar for a placement exam on June 6.
5. Write a long research paper on the Baath socialist regime in Iraq (I got some awesome primary sources from the library today! Written by Saddam and others in the party).
6. Write a long research paper on the Latin language and its influence as a global language (with a partner, eek! *ukifune hates collaboration*).
7. Meet with my honors advisors and talk to my sponsor (lady who gave me the scholarship) about funding a study abroad program in Beirut next summer.
8. Decide on a schedule, get add codes and register for Fall 2009 courses.
   
9. Buy some new high heels.

All the while, I have language exchange partners to meet with and a terrible addiction to music and writing, which take up hours of my day. Add to that the decision I made to throw away a few days of free time in order to go to that shareholders meeting this weekend.

Somehow, I always make the deadlines.

I have nothing in particular to blog about besides that it is very sunny here in Seattle, and yesterday was my one-year anniversary of being a vox member. A lot has happened since I created this blog... I have been around the world, quite literally!

Today is an interesting day, Yom Hashoah in Israel (Holocaust remembrance day) begins Tuesday, right next to Hitler's birthday. On campus, a group was reading just some of the names of the 6 million people killed in the Holocaust, very sad to hear those kinds of things. On the other hand, I am reading Cold War history and can you believe that, in total, approximately 27 million Soviet citizens died as a direct result of World War 2? The twentieth century was by far the most violent in history. The USSR's history is very terrifying yet fresh for me to read; it is a nice break from Middle Eastern politics.

On a less serious note, today is also 4-20, but I am not celebrating in any manner. I have not smoked marijuana since last December. Good riddance. I hate the smell of it. I have been taking other drugs quite sparingly as well! In the past two months, I have taken pills a few times but nothing too serious. Today, I made delicious vegetable curry rice!

I met a very good-looking Chinese-American guy last week. I thought he was Japanese because he was at a Japanese conversation group meeting (called Kaiwa Table) and he was stylish like he just came out of 109 for Men! He speaks Japanese very well too (besides overusing majide, which makes him sound a little girly). He grew up in Hawaii but studies at UW because, he says, the quality of education is better. Forgot his name though...

No matter! I will be in Tokyo shortly... only 53 days left in the States! There will be so many new people to meet! Also, I turned in my application for the seminar at Waseda; apparently I was the first and only person to apply. That was last week though, who knows now.

I got a bunch of new Ryu Murakami books from the library! Piercing, 69, and In the Miso Soup; I want to read all his novels!

Say,
Have you got a lighter?
I wanna,
set my self on fire,
I wanna,
slash the tires,
on that new Jaguar.

Have you got a lighter?
I wanna,
light myself on fire,
Believe me,
everyone's a liar,
and I'm so
god
damn
bored.

Forgive me father
have you
got a dagger?
I'm like
Juliet
just so god damn bored.

This ennui
is truly
killing me
don't take it personally
I'm just so damn bored.

Say, have you got a lighter?
To light this cigarette,
Icy wind breaks though
my jacket,
Hands freeze outside
my pocket,
just light it up,
I want to forget.
Have you got a lighter?
I'm like Juliet.

Ahem... well I have to make a timeline tonight of the years leading up to Lebanon's horrific 15 year civil war. I got a bit of reading still left to do, so I better get to it. Then it's final paper time!! woo~ Can't wait (for this quarter to be over)!

I got one of my textbooks that I need for next quarter early before other people bought out the used copies (and also because I'm secretly kind of nerdy and want to start reading it over spring break). It's called English as a Global Language, by David Crystal. It's for an honors class I'm taking next quarter about the proliferation of English language usage and its international consequences. Very excited. The professor is from the International Studies department, so it's going to be interesting to hear his view on the subject. Check out the cool cover!

I took part in many interesting conversations today. Everyday, I am amazed by how rich my life has become as a direct result of my ability to talk to different types of people. I love language and how it connects me to people from all walks of life, how it allows me to enter inside the minds, hearts, of other humans.

My morning started off in Isreal when the Balfour Declaration was signed and I left class a little bit depressed because of Lloyd George, President Wilson and Clemenceau, their ability to create nations from fallen empires in such a rash way, creating nationalism and ethnic tensions that would lead to massacres.

After class I met Reiko at Suzallo Library and we caught up on news. She is trying to get a fiance visa but she is returning to Japan next week after being in Seattle for more than a year. She asked me a lot about Tokyo and is glad that I had a positive experience there, and that I am planning on going back soon. I will hopefully visit her in Kobe this summer. We went to the international district where I bought some ingredients for Japanese dishes I want to try to cook (I just bought a wonderful cookbook) and she got her hair cut. I also used Reiko's age to buy a couple bottles of alcohol, umeshu and sake (we couldn't find any shochu??).

I had a dinner appointment with my other conversation partner, Osama from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He met me on University way and we went for dinner at a quiet restaurant. He's a sweet guy, I asked him to tell me a story, a story of something bad that he had done. He cleverly asked me, "In Saudi Arabia or here?" I requested a Saudi story and he went on to recount the tale of his last girlfriend to me, because you know, having pre-marital relationships is so bad... He said he knows that it's normal in America, but for them it's a very difficult and exciting thing to try to see girls without anyone knowing. He told me about how he would go to this girl's house when her family was sleeping and she'd let him in through the back door. We talked about all sorts of things, about his maids, drivers, and how he has trouble taking care of himself. To him, it's very important and useful to have maids.

He paid for dinner, he wouldn't let me pay. It was nice of him, but this type of behavior worries me since he is my conversation partner, not just any guy; our relationship should be almost business-like, but I often let this slip with my conversation partners. I only let him pay because he's Arab and it would be a stab to his ego to let me pay (well, also because I am half-way broke and he's ridiculously rich).

After dinner we went for coffee. I was running out of things to say and the platonic conversation appointment air was disappearing especially since he bought my coffee too. I was able to continue conversing of course but I started to feel like I was on a date. Long after my coffee was finished, we managed to walk to my house because I told him I wanted to put my leftovers away in the refridgerator. We walked to my house, he waited outside as I put away the food. When I came back down, we smoked a cigarette and it was a little bit awkward. He kept staring at me, and I am very familiar with this type of stare. Guys do it sometimes when they don't know what to say, I am not sure how to explain it, but it's very clear what they're feeling and I always feel pity. I have to look away, and when they continue, I ask, "what?"

And he replies, "what?" ignoring the fact that he was the one who initiated the awkwardness.
"Nothing, I am just sitting here," I said.
"And the moon is still shining."
"What?"
"The moon is still there, shining."
"..."
"Sometimes I try to translate Arabic expressions into English and it doesn't work. Once, my teacher asked me to close the door and I told him 'on my eyes...' it doesn't always make sense."
I laughed.
"You said you were just sitting there, I can see that, just like I can see the moon always shining, it's clear to me."
"I guess so." He continued to stare at me.
"I just miss the beauty of Arabian girls. They are the most beautiful in the world."
I tried to ignore his hidden compliment and said something like, "I think there are beautiful people from all places."
"Well, yes, but I guess it's just taste."
"Yeah everyone has their taste."
Then he did something weird. He asked me if he could touch my hair. I didn't really know what to say.
"Umm... sure."
He took one strand between his fingers and felt it, in silence, then commented on its softness.
I thanked him, then told him that I was getting a little tired and I wanted to go inside, but I didn't want to leave him alone. He said not to worry. I said good night, salam (peace), and went inside.

Winter quarter here in Seattle has begun with rain, rain and more rain and wind storms. It sure beats being snowed in at my father's house, but it ruins my shoes and puts my cigarettes out.

I am having a really good time in my classes. It's nice to be back at the University of Washington and around people educated in my field of interest.

Today started in the Israel class, we began very logically with pre-common-era civilizations, Mesopotamia and Egyptian civilizations, the Canaanites and Israelites, asking lots of questions, who the Israelites were, about the Hebrew Bible in terms of its historicity, looking at different historical evidence including the religious texts, looking at the progression of Israelite religion from Monolotry to Monotheism and the influences that created what we now consider Judaism (Zoroastrianism, who would have thought that Persian religion had such an impact on Judaism of today?). We tried to identify who Israelites were and where they were at various times. The head of the Near Eastern Languages and Culture department came in to lecture to us, it was like a special treat.

In the Ethnic Nationalism class, we also started in a very logical place, primates and hunter-gatherer humans. We looked at primates' social behavior, their social networks and mating habits. We examined the concept of in-people and out-people and the genetic disposition of humans to create in-groups (their own group) and out-groups (outside groups). Our genes don't determine what group will be considered an out-group, that comes from experience and socio-economic influences, but we are biologically coded to cling to our group and defend against outsiders.

The second hour of that class, we looked at human responses to questions of racism and group mentality. Looking at various studies and surveys, it appears that humans (in this case, white Americans) tend to defend their "group" more when they are mortality salient. When people are conscious of their mortality (when they had previous been asked to write an essay about their ideas of death), they were more likely to favor members of their own group. These are just conclusions of the study, I don't really want to write an essay here about it (I highly recommend reading it), but I thought it was really interesting and frightening at the same time when applied to modern politics (war on terror).

I also received notice of my language exchange partner (volunteer program to help international students practice English with native speakers) for the quarter, a Japanese girl named Ai. We are supposed to meet soon! Should be nice, since I am not taking Japanese courses any longer, I'd like to keep my Japanese skills sharp. This program is designed to allow students studying a foreign language to practice with native speakers of that chosen language, at the same time, helps international students who want to practice their English with us Americans. I really love doing it because I don't think international students have much support when they come to Seattle, and the people in the foreign exchange offices probably don't have the same kind of time and patience that some of the volunteers might have. Also I just think it's fun to make new friends from different places. I hope to be assigned a few more students in my other languages.

I have a voice and it carries all the ideas out of my brain in symbols word form
i can tell people things with these words and with language and words and voice
thats what makes me human

language
language
makes me uncrazy

guys can't get close i have a lot of words in the way, lots and lots an lots of words that cover me, that hover around me, define me words

but what happens when the words disappear? Empty spot! Hole, What can I fill it with? nothing
there's nothig in my heart i need more material, go find more!
more images lots of colorful words

no one there to save me! only me there to collect the tears
 over there i have to stand up to the light

time passes so slowly