Foreign and language

I realized today that much of my life lately is about language - learning words, teaching words, searching for the right words - and not in a literary or creative sense but in the very basic way of how can I get people to understand me and not stare blankly.

I got plenty of blank stares from 7th graders this week. I took that as a good sign, though, because at least they were looking at me and maybe trying to pay attention. I've been covering Spanish classes at the school while the husband-wife pair of Spanish teachers takes the 8th grade students on an exchange to Spain. So the 7th graders stared blankly, while the 6th graders were generally squirmy. They aren't misbehaving exactly, they just constantly make nonsense noises or bounce in their chairs or poke each other...until they get to play with their computers. Then they are mesmerized, silent, and still. The 9th and 10th graders nodded a lot when I spoke to them in Spanish, which is what I do when someone is talking to me in German and I don't really understand but don't want to admit it. However, they did answer some questions correctly so maybe they were not totally faking it.

It was my turn to be the student in German class.
Topics we discussed this week include: mother tongues (also known as native languages) and how many of them you can really have, organ donation, both legal and illegal including use of plastic eyeballs, discrimination against immigrants, what Mohammad should do about his sore back, what happens if you call in sick to work too much, how to use the correct forms of "therefore", "because of", and the other word that also means "therefore", which language is the prettiest, ugliest, and makes the best lyrics in a pop song.

Today I saw my conversation partner Helga for the first time in a while. I told her about the 8th graders doing the exchange in Spain with students who are learning English, and she shook her head and said that the Spanish really don't learn German much in school. My immediate thought (which I did not express) was "why should they?". Unless they want to work at a resort in Mallorca, they probably should be learning English, or maybe French, or better yet, Chinese. Helga is not doing so well. She and her husband of 40+ years have decided to separate (even though they don't live together now - I don't really understand the difference but don't think it's my place to ask). She is kind of distracted and sad but wants to keep meeting anyway. We talked more about how to use "therefore" in a sentence and discussed Margaret Thatcher's death, in English. As I was about to leave she started to cry. I am not sure I am equipped for this, especially in another language.

I keep thinking that the language part of my brain must be getting in good shape from all this exercise. Of course, there are other parts of it that are probably going through atrophy, like the driving a car part, the talking to strangers part, gardening part, and the being somebody's boss part. Here I feel more often like I am not running things so much as running them through Google Translate and hoping I didn't miss anything important in the translation. Therefore, it's a good thing I don't hate foreign languages, because blank stare doesn't get you very far. An eager but vacant smile with a head nod is a much better.