26.3.10

run before you can walk

Last night I tried to run before I've even learnt to walk.  I had a case of the four-year-old, I'm a big-kid now and I don't want to miss out on anything.  You know that feeling?  You see my German is progressing reasonably well - I can do the day-to-day things without too much effort and I can even ask where to find stuff in the supermarket, which is really a huge improvement because not so long ago I was ringing Matthias to ask what something was called in German so that I could ask the check-out chic where to find it.  I've improved so much that lately when Matthias and I go out with German-speaking friends we have even ended up speaking a mix, "eine mischung", of english and german.  So it would be safe to say that I've been feeling pretty good about what I've achieved in three months.  So good in fact that I thought I could attend a Latvian play with German 'translation' and understand.  I'll just repeat that so you fully digest my silliness - I decided I could attend a Latvian play with German 'translation' and understand after learning German for roughly four months. Crazy right?  Like I said, I decided I could run before I can really walk.

I have no idea what the play was about.  I think it was about beliefs and hope with a bit of Latvian nostalgia thrown in (the Latvian friends we went with were crying at certain points).  And even though I didn't understand, I did find the whole process and performance quite interesting - at least for a little while.  The play was performed in Latvian.  All the non-Latvian people in the audience received headphones and you heard the german translation of the performance through the headphones as the performers spoke.  After a couple of minutes you could easily hear both - the german in one ear and the Latvian in the other.  Problem was that I couldn't understand either.  For a while I really concentrated and could kind-of understand, then as I got tired I would try to recognise words or phrases that I understood.  And then I stopped listening altogether and thought about whether I should cut my hair or grow it long again.  It'll be a little while before I attend german theatre again - I think I'll stick to music for now.

What's your biggest "overly ambitious" moment of late?

2 comments:

Jess said...

Hey sometimes we have to be overly ambitious. If you don't try then you won't succeed. But then again sometimes we fail miserably haha. I have been overly ambitious lately by taking a third year behaviour class, when the second year one made me feel incredibly stupid. I'm certainly in over my head but at least I'm trying to make sense of it all.

katie@weheartbooks.com said...

Today mum asked me to pick the remaining figs from the orchard. I knew it was ambitious but I took the bucket. I returned with the bucket 'full' of one decent fig. :) Sorry to torture you with a fig story but it immediately sprang to mind... xo