My roommates
I thought I'd start with the lowdown on my roommates.
Hussni has the room next to mine, and we share a balcony. He’s here from Jordan for a three-month Engineering internship. His English is pretty good, so we can usually communicate just fine. I’d imagined I’d live with some caricature German guys who’d be bringing home girls and getting me to booze with them all the time, and they put me with a guy whose religious and cultural values prohibit alcohol and sex. That suits me just fine - I like a low-key homestead. Nizam thinks we need to find him a girlfriend.
Nizam is my other roommate, a Chemistry student from Turkey. He’s already lived in our place for two years. He’s fluent in German, but his English is pretty limited. Sometimes we discuss the differences between our native cultures, and sometimes we’re just glad we can communicate things like “I moved the toaster over here because there was no room over there.” Nizam’s hobbies include playing his loud Turkish music, loudly singing in Turkish, dancing, putting a straw hat on and dancing, and eating at all hours of the day.
It’s a mess of languages here. Hussni translates Nizam’s Arabic into English for me (Nizam is from a part of Turkey that’s close to the Arabic region, so he’s fluent), I translate Nizam’s German into English for Hussni, and nobody understands Nizam’s Turkish. Hussni’s given me a few Arabic lessons - I now can write and recite several letters, and say the words for rabbit, door, flower, sand, bull, and good night. I don’t know any verbs or prepositions, though, so the rabbit can’t go through the door to get the flower yet.
Both Nizam and Hussni are two of the most good-natured guys I’ve ever met. That helped a lot in the first couple of weeks. It’s fun to see new things and meet new people, but then you run out of clean underwear, and nobody does things the way you’re used to. Everyone you care about, and who cares about you, is on another continent, and you’re not moving back for over a year. When I started to feel like that, I’d come home, or they’d come home, we’d have a good time, and I’d still miss everybody, but I wouldn’t be so down about it.
That's it for now. More to come.
Hussni has the room next to mine, and we share a balcony. He’s here from Jordan for a three-month Engineering internship. His English is pretty good, so we can usually communicate just fine. I’d imagined I’d live with some caricature German guys who’d be bringing home girls and getting me to booze with them all the time, and they put me with a guy whose religious and cultural values prohibit alcohol and sex. That suits me just fine - I like a low-key homestead. Nizam thinks we need to find him a girlfriend.
Nizam is my other roommate, a Chemistry student from Turkey. He’s already lived in our place for two years. He’s fluent in German, but his English is pretty limited. Sometimes we discuss the differences between our native cultures, and sometimes we’re just glad we can communicate things like “I moved the toaster over here because there was no room over there.” Nizam’s hobbies include playing his loud Turkish music, loudly singing in Turkish, dancing, putting a straw hat on and dancing, and eating at all hours of the day.
It’s a mess of languages here. Hussni translates Nizam’s Arabic into English for me (Nizam is from a part of Turkey that’s close to the Arabic region, so he’s fluent), I translate Nizam’s German into English for Hussni, and nobody understands Nizam’s Turkish. Hussni’s given me a few Arabic lessons - I now can write and recite several letters, and say the words for rabbit, door, flower, sand, bull, and good night. I don’t know any verbs or prepositions, though, so the rabbit can’t go through the door to get the flower yet.
Both Nizam and Hussni are two of the most good-natured guys I’ve ever met. That helped a lot in the first couple of weeks. It’s fun to see new things and meet new people, but then you run out of clean underwear, and nobody does things the way you’re used to. Everyone you care about, and who cares about you, is on another continent, and you’re not moving back for over a year. When I started to feel like that, I’d come home, or they’d come home, we’d have a good time, and I’d still miss everybody, but I wouldn’t be so down about it.
That's it for now. More to come.