Мене звати джесіка. - My name is Jessica.
Я з америки, штат колорадо. - I am from America, the state of Colorado.
Our lessons took place at our language teacher's house. His living room was our classroom and he filled poster sheets of paper with verb tenses, conjugations and charts. He started each lesson by asking us simple questions about our state of being, what we did in our free time and if we liked the weather outside. I later used this same technique in my own classroom.
I often confused “Yak tebe svaty?” (What is your name) with “Yak cpraviy?” (How are you) and answered “What is your name?” with “I’m doing very well, thank you, although I didn’t sleep well.”
We played matching games and board games that Serhiy created himself to learn the many and varied tenses of the verb, "to go." I hated that verb. Slightly different letters added on to the verb meant you were coming, leaving, going around, returning, or that you had been or would go. We learned that the noun ending changed depending on the context and conjugation of the verb.
I was able to start having simple conversations with my host family. In one conversation, Baba said the family would be sad when I left and I couldn’t go very far away so I could visit. I said I would like to stay close and would definitely come visit. Well, that was the point I wanted to get across. Because of my limited language, it sounded more like, “yes, yes, not far away, not far away. I’ll tell the Peace Corps. (laughter) I will visit by mashrutka or bus or train.”
I asked Oksana if I could use the Internet and she said, "Ask me in Ukrainian" so I said "ok, можна … iнтернет?" (Can I... Internet).
I didn't know the word for 'to use' so she said it went like this, “(insert word that is seven syllables long)" and I said, “Say what?”
And she wrote it down, використовувати. I glared at her and said, "Why does that word have a million letters?"
"Huh?" she asked.
"1,2,3,4...15." I said. “The word 'use' has three letters and that word 'vikoristovoovaty' has 15 letters. Why?"
She giggled at me.
I came home from my Ukrainian lessons one day and my host mom Svyeta tried to ask me why I was home early. But she didn’t speak English and my Ukrainian was still awful so she tried to ask me this with a dictionary. Something about how Oksana was at school until 2 or 3 p.m. and I was home earlier than that.
What I got out of it was that I wasn’t learning the language very quickly and I should be working harder like Oksana, and I was home early because I hadn’t studied very hard.
My insecurity might have played a role here. So I burst into tears.
“I’m doing the best I can and I’m far away from home and I miss my family and I study every night and it’s not like I can learn a language in three weeks! It’s a hard language and it’s confusing and I just don’t get it!” I said, in a speedy rush of English while she stared at me, bewildered and wide-eyed.
Oksana came home then and asked, “What is going on?” She translated what her mom had been asking me.
“Oh,” I said. I was so embarrassed I didn’t want to tell them what my interpretation had been.
The next morning I found out from three different people in town that everyone knew I had cried. Thank you, small town.
No comments:
Post a Comment