Good morning or afternoon :)

Today is not going to be as long - yay!
I have realised, how bad I was talking about things back in OZ. I want to say sorry for that, it is not all that bad ;) I don't know how to explain this one; I know why I am doing it, but it's hard to put into words. I will give it a go anyway. You see, the things that you are familiar with the most - the things that you grew up with - will always seem like the 'right way' of doing things. Everybody who does something different to the way you are used to, will seem strange and a bit 'wrong'. Obviously, there is no perfect culture. Some do things better in one way and others do them better in another, it is about how things eventually work out all together. Living in a different country, tho, is not about two or three little things being done differently but the whole system works completely different - eople had to adjust to their environment (or rather try to make the environment adjust to the people). I have not met a single European, who agrees with the Perth culture. However, some are willing to adjust more than I am and just get over the strangeness not trying to 'convert' others into the way they want it. I couldn't do this and this is why after 3 years of trying to cope with the strangeness, I ended u going back home. Having said that, who knows what you would be thinking, if you lived 3 years in a different culture!? Maybe you would understand, what I am saying here.

Earlier this morning I wrote an email to a friend in Australia. I explained to him, what my work situation was like at that particular moment; My auntie had offered me a job on an assembly line, three shift work (6am - 2pm, 2pm - 10pm, 10pm - 6am, changing weekly), the pay was ok, but it was very hard accessible from where I live, because I did not intend to use the car (although I already had 'driving lessons' on the right side of the road, I am still scared). I would have taken the job, but  I also applied at other jobs (something with kids or somewhere where my English comes in handy), in the hope something comes up. The jobs I applied for have not gotten back to me, yet. However, just while writing that email, my other auntie called, telling me my dad has sorted out another job at his company, pretty much same work - I mean where is the difference between screwing on caps onto perfume bottles or gluing boxes?? :D However, slightly better pay and whatsmore better accessibility, it is 'only' 10km away, meaning I can get there by bicycle and straight away get some exercise in, too. The great thing about this is, my auntie explained to me that if my dad had asked his supervisor yesterday, the job would not have been available - it only became available just before my dad asked. There we go, the universe is sorting things out for me once again :)

Another (hopefully) short topic: Last night one of my best friends called me up. He wanted to go to the cinemas with me, so went to see the 11pm screening of 'bridesmaids' (Brautalarm). Growing up with 90% of movies being dubbed into German (the other 10% being German movies), I never realised how unnatural it is to watch dubbed movies. I couldn't concentrate on the movie at all. I was just concentrating on, how badly the voices were synced with lip movement and facial expressions. In many instances I could lip-read what the person actually was saying in English and it pissed me off that it came out in German words. I don't think I will ever enjoy cinemas as much as I used to before I left Germany. Here cinemas are a much more affordable activity and back in high school we went to the cinemas at least once a week if not up to 3 or even 4 times. I can't see that happening anymore for me, the dubbing is just too much of an issue. I hope there are cinemas around that have screening of the original versions or else I will just continue not to go to cinemas anymore, which really would be a shame :(

Ok, that's it for today.

Have a great day/evening.
T

early morning thoughts

Good morning or something like that anyway.

I have been awake since 8.30 AM on my laptop clock, which would be a great time to wake up ... if I still was in Perth. Instead it is still pitch black outside. 8.30 used to be my natural time to wake up, which makes me come to the conclusion that I have not adjusted the slightest bit to German time yet - awesome!

I always had major problems with jet lags. Last year, when coming back to Perth from Germany, I managed to be jet-lagged for over 2 months! So, a friend of mine suggested to take a Serotonin supplement to get me sorted better. Serotonin, however, is a natural chemical in the brain with two functions. During the day Serotonin itself has affect on your mood and keeps you happy, at night it transforms into Melatonin and makes you sleepy. My body decided that it is daytime now, so instead of getting back to sleep after taking the supplement earlier, I lay in bed being a very happy cookie.
This reminds me, yesterday in the newspaper there was something about "Depression being a Nation wide disease in Germany", the day before yesterday I also heard about this in TV and radio. They reckon that 0.8% of Germans have depression, when I heard this I just had to laugh. It seems to me like in Australia everyone will be diagnosed with depression at one time or another. In my opinion the diagnosis of depression (and with that the prescription of medication) is made much much quicker in Australia. Don't get me wrong, there are people with serious depression out there (usually it is a chemical imbalance in your brain, because of a lack of Serotonin), but just because someone has a bad run over a few weeks because bad things have been happening to them, does not make them depressed! Depression in my opinion is a state of mind that does not have anything to do with events around you but rather a constant, unexplainable nagging/sadness or whatever.
However, the reason why I am writing about depression here, actually, has something to do with language and cultural differences. When I had my car accident I had to go for a check up at the doctors the day after and another the week after. At the second check-up he asked me, how I went the week before, and I was happy to declare that most of the pain had gone. But this time he hadn't asked for my physical state but my mental state making sure I didn't have post-depression. Something I didn't understand the whole week, was that everyone was being overly worried about me. Yes, my mum and my closest friends are allowed to do that, but what the hell did work care? According to the doctor, people suffer post-depression after 'serious' accidents. However, this wasn't even a serious accident, ok two cars got totalled but nobody got hurt. Well, to cut a long story short, my doctor explained to me that there have been studies conducted between different countries and mental disorders. Apparently, English-speaking (no matter which country) people suffer 10x more mental disorders than German speaking.
This, in my opinion, has to do with two things; first, if somebody complains in an English culture, people listen and care - not just close friends and family but also work and even strangers. If Germans complain, friends and family will care for a while but then u r very quickly told to get on with it. As long as u don't have a Serotonin deficiency, getting on with it is easy as long as u do not have the chance to dwell on it for too long. Dwelling on problems is hard to do, when people help you process things but then also tell you to stop being ridiculous if you overdo the complaining.
The second reason that I can make out, has something to do with the language. In the last 4 years I came to the conclusion that English is mainly two things: Implicit and packed in cotton-balls, while German is direct and functional. People who speak English are used to explaining themselves more, whatever you want to say you have to say it detailed in a million words, while German has one word for the same situation. To make my point clear, I will use one of my favourite examples of cultural differences:. This anecdote has been told to me quite at the start of my time in Australia, so I had lots of opportunities to observe situations like this: An Australian-born girl comes home with a new beautiful dress. The mother - Swiss-German - asks: "Where did you buy it from?" the daughter was absolutely beside herself being upset because her mum 'never appreciated' the things she bought/said/did. The mum didn't understand what just happened. In the daughters mind, her mum should have said "What a beautiful dress, I absolutely love it. Can you, please, tell me, where you bought it!? So, I can go there, too, to check out the shop." The mum felt like she had said exactly that in the one question.. Because German is such a straight forward and functional language, the speaker is used to say things in the shortest way possible and the receiver is able to de-code the message by reading between the lines, while English is not as explicit and people are used to explaining themselves more.
I have absolutely come accustomed to saying things in detail nowadays, by now it comes naturally to me. Yesterday I got an email about my first entry by a German friend, she wrote that she knows exactly, what I am talking about but she never thought about it this way. In our teacher's course we are taught to reflect on everything - I hate it in most circumstances but when it comes down to languages and cultures I have developed a passion for over-analysing things.
I just had a weird train of thought. Did ever anybody notice that apart from start of sentences, (city/country) names and the word "I" usually all letters are in lower cases in English? - of course you have realised, this is Primary School stuff. However, don't you think it is a bit 'I'-centred? What is so important about 'I' that we have to capitalise it? Doesn't this say a lot about a culture? I have to think about this some more. Just for the non-German speaking under us: In German you capitalise sentence beginnings, (city/country) names and all nouns but not 'ich'. Any thoughts about this?

Wow, this again was a ramble! I am sure it will quieten down soon. I will run out of anecdotes eventually :D

So have a great day everyone, I am off to bed, it is 10.45/4.45 now :)

T

First entry rambles

Hi everyone,

now I am finding myself creating my own blog. I never thought I would do this, as I never really thought someone would read it anyway. However, after following a couple of blogs myself, I came to the conclusion that blogging is not merely an activity to let people know what you think/feel/experience but also to come to terms with these experiences and emotions yourself, while hoping that someone out there will read it - kind of like a psychiatric diary.

So, but why am I writing (and just now my playlist decides to play "Daughtry - Home". To put this event into Sheldon's words: "this would be one of those circumstances that people unfamiliar with the law of large numbers would call a coincidence."). Well, yes I am home again. But home seems strange - not in a negative sense, just less familiar than it did before. During the last 4 years I have always been seen as a 'typical German' - apparently, all Germans are like I am. This was because apart from Anita and I our friends hardly knew any Germans. The thing that nobody (not even I) realised, was how much I have assimilated to the Australian culture. In my last semester at Murdoch University I took part in an elective unit called 'Teaching Languages other than English'. In this unit we learned about language acquisition, theories of how people learn foreign languages and how teachers can aid children to learn them. I loved, ♥♥♥, LOVED this unit. In 2,5 years at uni I did do a better unit! One of the aspects in this unit was about "finding your third place" between the foreign language and your own language. Language does not only bring a set of new words into your life but is THE gateway to learning about a culture - even before this unit I had long philosophical talks about the cultural differences between English and German language (my favourites: "I love you", 'thank you' and directness will be explained in a later entry). While studying the 'third place' I was sure I understood exactly, what it was about. After all, I have experienced it for the last 4 years - of course I knew its value! However, while the 'third place' in Australia seemed like a natural space to be in for me, it hit me hard, when I realised, I again have to find another 'third place' - this time in the country and culture that I grew up in. And this is pretty much what my blog is going to be about - my new 'third place'.

Where shell I start? There is so much, very many little things. (And I have just deleted a whole bunch of examples, because suddenly they seem weird to point out; some things you just have to experience to see how weird they are, e.g. when u walk down the road and you have to stop for a chat every 2 Minutes because u meet people who lived in the same street as your parents for at least the last 30 years and feel like they should take part in your life. Or having to pay for public toilets, or not being upset that u missed ur bus because u know there is another one coming in 10 min or just experiencing how extremely direct (but friendly) Germans are). Moreover, in three day I already found myself a few times looking out of the window to "see what the neighbours are doing" and pointing it out to someone else - you can't be more German than this ;)

But there is the question, what is German? 82 million people certainly can't be all the same, and still there are things embedded in us that make us tick similar. Take my parents, how German are they? They kind of went through the same process as I did - maybe even worse (I must ask them and find out how they experienced the change). You see, my parents grew up as Germans in Romania. I can imagine that they grew up thinking they were brought up with the German culture but when they actually came over to Germany in their 20'ies there were probably a lot of things different to what they expected. I don't know this for sure, I never talked to them about this, but now I am going through something similar myself and it seems like this should be the case.

On a high note: Having come home in summer, I find our garden just magical. I go outside and dance, there are all kinds of berries - everywhere!!! Blackberries, redcurrants, blackcurrants, elderberries, strawberries, raspberries!!! And if you feel like something else but berries u go and pick tomatoes, capsicums, chives, peas or whatever vegetable u can think of. Germans love their gardens, but a garden like ours is unusual, it has been kept up for almost 25 years with lots of hard work and love. Things taste better, when you know how much hard work went into creating them - my brother and I knew this even as babies, when we used to spit out bought baby food and couldn't get enough of self made puree that was made of the veggies in our garden :) I would love to say that when I am grown up (like in >30 years), I will have a garden like this, but I already know I won't - tooooooo much work. Let's hope my parents will never loose their passion for this garden and I will never loose the magical feeling, when stepping into it - it is truly beautiful and I feel blessed to have been able to grow up here - even if, when I was younger, I never knew how special this place is.

I have many things to say, but I do not want to over-fill my first entry, don't want to scare you guys of coming back (if anyone even bothers to read this :) ). I know that in a very short time I will forget about the strangeness of this place and start taking things for granted once again. Eventually, I will change my laptop and watch time to German time and will tell my mum it is 3 PM instead of 9 PM. Soon this moment again will be another memory of a great life that my parents enable me to live with all the support and encouragement you can think of - which I actually have never really appropriately thanked them for! Got to do that soon :)

To conclude my first entry, I do not want to forget how I am feeling currently and I do want to share this blog with you guys to let you take part of my life even if u r not on my facebook ;)

Have a nice day everyone.
Love you,
blub

P.S.: I promise following entries will be shorter :D