Language/family wangst
Several of my relatives from Taiwan are visiting and staying with my family right now, and today they all came up to see me and look at the campus and see my dwellings.
Two words for you: Awk. Ward.
I think I said about two coherent things in Chinese the whole time. I really wanted to bust out my new language skillz, but at the same time I didn't want to make it all about ME, and "oh yay I get to PRACTICE ON YOU," and I thought, "Well, maybe they want to practice their English on ME," and also some cowardly part of me just didn't want to draw attention to myself by saying something reasonably fluent, because then the bar would be raised and it would be doubly embarrassing when one of them thought, "Oh, I can have an actual conversation with her!" and said something and I just stared blankly at them. OR SOMETHING.
So I smiled stupidly and nodded a lot and kicked myself mentally. Say it! Say it in Chinese, you IDIOT. And the whole time my mom's hissing in my ear going, "Go talk to your cousin!" (who isn't that much younger than me, but sticks to her mother's side like glue)--which, yeah, THANKS, MOM. LIKE THIS ISN'T SOCIALLY AWKWARD FOR ME TOO. There was a good moment when her mom spotted my Naruto poster, and I could practically hear the switch flipping in both our heads: "Aha, something we could bond over!" (Anime, the universal language!) But it was a case of "too little, too late" for this visit--now they probably think I have the Chinese language capacity of a damaged three-year-old, when in fact I have been studying this stuff intensely for almost two years now.
OTL
The weather today sucks, too, so basically, EVERYTHING'S depressing and stupid.
Two words for you: Awk. Ward.
I think I said about two coherent things in Chinese the whole time. I really wanted to bust out my new language skillz, but at the same time I didn't want to make it all about ME, and "oh yay I get to PRACTICE ON YOU," and I thought, "Well, maybe they want to practice their English on ME," and also some cowardly part of me just didn't want to draw attention to myself by saying something reasonably fluent, because then the bar would be raised and it would be doubly embarrassing when one of them thought, "Oh, I can have an actual conversation with her!" and said something and I just stared blankly at them. OR SOMETHING.
So I smiled stupidly and nodded a lot and kicked myself mentally. Say it! Say it in Chinese, you IDIOT. And the whole time my mom's hissing in my ear going, "Go talk to your cousin!" (who isn't that much younger than me, but sticks to her mother's side like glue)--which, yeah, THANKS, MOM. LIKE THIS ISN'T SOCIALLY AWKWARD FOR ME TOO. There was a good moment when her mom spotted my Naruto poster, and I could practically hear the switch flipping in both our heads: "Aha, something we could bond over!" (Anime, the universal language!) But it was a case of "too little, too late" for this visit--now they probably think I have the Chinese language capacity of a damaged three-year-old, when in fact I have been studying this stuff intensely for almost two years now.
OTL
The weather today sucks, too, so basically, EVERYTHING'S depressing and stupid.