How To Convince Others You Understand When You Have No Idea

If you are learning a language and do not understand what anybody is saying, or are merely not listening, here are 5 rules you can follow to “pass by” while not sticking out or possibly even have others think you know what is going on.

1. 1. Don’t underestimate the smile and nod. Whenever one or more individuals are talking look the speaker in the eye and grin. Every so often add head movements to indicate it is interesting or you are on the same page. Some possible movements include: the slightly furrowed brow while elongating the neck closer to the speaker; place one hand on the chin or over the mouth if the feeling of the conversation is contemplative; or a slightly confused squint of the eyes followed by raising of the eyebrows and a nod indicating understanding. It is important not to exaggerate the nod. Slight movements work best.

2. 2. When others laugh it is appropriate and important to laugh as well. However, do not exceed the laugh of the person who is laughing the most, and just to be safe the penultimate laugher. This includes loudness, length, amount of teeth showing or mouth open, and number of snorts.

3. 3. If available, every so often look up a random word in a language dictionary. The goal of this rule is to give a sense that you have just about figured out what the speaker means. Looking up this one word should allow you to understand. Caution: Do not use too often, as it may appear you are just scanning the dictionary out of boredom.

4. 4. When beginning to pick up on words that others are using, if you feel confident, repeat that word softly. This may reflect your agreement with the speaker as well as convey that you do indeed understand them. Feel free to add in a rule 1 if it suits you.

5. 5. Finally, and also having to do with picking up on words. It is wise to remain calm and not display exaggerated expressions when you hear the word in conversation. Most often people are less interested that “20” or “television” were used. Although it may be exciting to hear “Wochenende” and know someone means “weekend,” it can be counterproductive if it is surrounded by “Mein Grossvater ist Vorwochenende gestorben.” Here, smiling enthusiastically can be inappropriate.

These are now yours to use as you wish. Please report back to me how they work. I would be very interested to hear and understand.

Happy Daydreaming!

Dan

Gobble.

This Thanksgiving, we cooked up a fine meal of mashed potatoes and green bean casserole, just a couple of the essentials that were easier than others to mimic from a foreign grocery store. Of course the green beans had Gouda on top instead of cheddar, and quite a sour version of sour cream, but our tastebuds approved overwhelmingly of the substitutions.

On our way to the grocery store today, we stopped in at the barn next door. We’d heard that they were a farm that used to be organic, but no longer is because, like in the US, organic is an expensive label you have to buy from the government. The farmers run a small, one room business off the side of their barn, with crates full of naturally raised offerings lining the periphery. We bought our produce there, a couple local meats and 10 liters of local, natural apple juice. The woman there was very friendly, making conversation throughout and offering us samples of each apple juice variety.

We left the store beyond content and in the proper Thanksgiving mood. Now as we sit here, the solitude of not gathering with family affords us a strange opportunity to sincerely reflect on the past year and the many things we are thankful for. Here is a random sprinkling of things that shaped our year and us, und dafuer sind wir dankbar:

Supportive, loving family and friends

The opportunity to live in Germany and explore

Michael Postzich and family

Education

Lutheran Volunteer Corps

L’Arche Tahoma Hope

Farms

Earth’s Bounty

People who engage us in stimulating, vital conversation

Pigs (Bryce: alive, Dan: cooked)

Crosswords

Hills

Bicycles

Jobs

Rain

USC’s Fall…

The restored health of loved ones and mere false alarms

The Oxford German Dictionary, holding strong since seventh grade

Skype

Homemade Meals

Loud singing, however poor

The ability to laugh and share laughter

Listening

Harry Potter not being too magical

A welcoming home and homes to come home to, should we ever need

Political change

In our blessed lives, we’ve surely missed many things, but these are a few of the thoughts we had today, emphasis on number one.

Love,

Bryce and Dan

ein Paar Fotos

We finally took the camera out for a few pictures. This should give you some idea of where we are living here in Germany. We hope you enjoy them!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2560413&id=1210796&l=647e5ebb35

My Life As A Morning Person and Day One

A day for every hour. We had heard that it would take this long to adjust back to a normal schedule. For every hour and time zone we change (is it 7 or 9 hours in our case since we lived on the West Coast but spent a week in the Midwest?) it requires a day to feel “normal.” Having expired these days, I am wondering if I myself have changed.

I have never had an easy time in the mornings. I’m a snoozer; those additional 9 minutes seem so wonderful once the alarm goes off. When it rings a second time the 9 is only slightly less sweet, and I continue to be able to fall back asleep in no time at all. However, in recent years, out of respect for Bryce I have attempted to limit myself to one snooze, fairly successfully. Yes, I hate alarms; I cringe when a television or radio commercial uses alarms and tell myself never to buy this product. Rather, I am much more of a night person, getting my second wind around 8 or 9 in the pm, able to stay awake a few hours longer than would be ideal for a sustainable schedule. If only there were 25 or 26 hours in the day.

This, however, has not been the case since our arrival in Bad Oeynhausen. I have been unable to sleep past 7, save once. Since experiencing the feeling of wasting a day by sleeping into the afternoon, as described in the Berlin blog, I have felt the need to get up when I wake up so I can use this time. I have said before “mornings are beautiful, it’s just too bad they’re so damn early.” But I have been enjoying them. I’ve been relaxing, getting things done, studying German, reading, sending email, exercising, etc. It has been very pleasant. As a reaction to these early mornings, I have been wearing down as the day has gone, taking naps in the afternoon, feeling tired around 6 or 7, and being ready for bed anytime after 8:30. I’ve gained some insight of how morning people, those who need early nights, may feel.

But I was also nervous with Monday being my first day of work, and my shift was between 1:15 and 8 in the evening. Having been awake since 6:30 I was worried I would be too tired to be useful.

My first day is a blur. Several people may remember me saying that most people know English in Germany so I was not too worried. Well that is not necessarily the case. Most in my workplace do not know or are not confident enough in their English to use it. The co-worker I interacted with most had fairly good English but it still required effort to understand each other. There were times when I would ask a question and she would give an answer to a different question. Most of these I would just let slide. There was so much to learn - names, personalities, what I need to do, where everything is, and all of this while attempting to remember the German words (safe to say that little is remembered from day one). There were very few personal attempts at speaking, most of which were unsuccessful and ignored. My most successful communication with a client was asking him “Woher ist Dominik?” and receiving an understanding point.

I also realized the limits of my English and felt sorry for my colleagues who were partially putting up with walking me through everything because I was teaching them English. It was even difficult for me to say “drawer” (as in silverware drawer, not an artist) so that others would understand its pronunciation, and several minutes were spent on this one word. Throughout the seemingly elongated day I was growing more and more tired as the time approached 6, 7, 8 pm.

After Day 1, it is clear that this year will be both interesting as well as difficult and challenging. It will require a great deal of hard work, to communicate to others, to study when I’m away from work, as well as my normal work responsibilities.

I do not know which quirks or differences at my work are due to living in a foreign country and which are due to the individual people I meet and the individual community. I have already, and am sure I will continue, compared Wittekindshof with other communities in which I have worked or been a part of. On a scale from L’Arche to Western State, I see Wittekindshof as closer to L’Arche, and I don’t believe this is solely due to similarities in the population. Wittekindshof is home to the clients. It is comfortable. Most individuals that I have observed (I’ll let you know when I am able to have conversations, though I wouldn’t count any minutes) are happy with the living arrangements. Several have nice couches, and flat screen TV’s in their bedrooms. The clients enjoy the staff, who are willing and allowed to be much more affectionate than the hospital staff. They enjoy each other also. For example, one woman helped another woman with a game, and gave her a “well done” back rub when she was succeeding.

I do see similarities with the hospital as well, and my work there will surely benefit me here. In both places it is a job for the staff and feels like it. There is a feeling of staff “hiding out” in the office, which I witnessed while working at Western State. I have made plans to break free of this separation. My opinion of L’Arche continues to be affirmed; their community does keep its members at the “core” of what they do. Upon hearing about Bryce’s first day it is interesting how much our previous positions affect the lens with which we view our experience here. Coming from an institutional setting to a more community-based environment provides me some relief. In all, I am looking forward to working here. It will surely be a humbling experience, and I have an opportunity to learn many things. And I survived the first day.

After work, I was exhausted. Bryce had dinner available when arriving home (a godsend). We went over our lease with the landlord, which was good to take care of but long. We watched an episode of a TV show we brought with (Pushing Daisies) but I fell asleep early on. We went to bed. I slept deeply. I woke up, as I have previously, at some point. 4:30, 5:30, 6:30? I did not know. Until about 7 our room is pitch black; we do have nice blinds, but I still did not expect this. In our apartment in Berkeley we had windows to the hallway where there were lights on through the night, even my house in Tacoma had enough street and other lights that my eyes would adjust. I have grown to expect this pollution, figuring that it was in all places. I finally made the decision to wake up further to relieve myself, having already decided against this earlier, in hopes of better sleep. When I came back I could not sleep and was lying in bed. Crap. Lying there…lying there. For 15 minutes, then 30. I refused to open my eyes; I finally did to test how awake I was, how tired my eyes were. They were still pretty sleepy. I committed the cardinal sin, telling myself, “Dan you need to fall asleep when you are this tired, just so you know you can.” I began thinking of what I could do if I got up. But I still had hope. I still could sleep. I tried to sleep. I was about to give up. Then…bliss. Then, I was playing on the Twins with Mark Swenson a friend of my parents. It was the deciding game in a playoff series against the Yankees. We were in the Twins dugout next to Tommy Lasorda. I slept solidly. We were trailing 3 to 2 in the early innings before I woke up 15 minutes before our 9:30 alarm. Who wants to get woken up by their alarm anyways…I’m back!

And Once More Employed

Disclaimer: I may have been a little bit of a downer in this entry. I wanted to let you know where I’m at after Day One, an honest reflection for our nearest and dearest.

Today was the first day of work for each of us. I have mixed impressions, though as an emotional pragmatist I often do. My experience here will be very different than it was at L’Arche for a number of reasons, and I expected this. Wittekindshof is a much larger community than L’Arche, with about 2500 “clients.” Most of the residences are large buildings, set up with wings like a hospital. It is not the familiar, comfortable setting of a L’Arche home. Then, there is the verbal barrier, as each “client” has an individual language and range of ability; I experienced this at L’Arche, and knew that as a foreign speaker of German, it would be even more challenging here. And, after spending over a year at L’Arche, even the term “client” rather than “core member” sounds removed, cold. I expected these differences, though. What bothered me really was that my boss in every introduction included “she can’t understand everything I’m saying.” Funny, I understood this degradation each and every time. I tried to politely counter this assumption in various ways, by telling him that I studied German for six years, that I studied abroad in Potsdam, even agreed with him eagerly when he told a coworker that he could understand a lot of English but was always nervous to speak it. I told him it was the same for me, and thought hopefully that he would then ease up on his assumption that my German skills were lacking. I suppose this is the curse of being shy/introverted and just not having the urge to say much. I process much but express little overtly. So he has presented me with a challenge for our time here: I need to assert myself and gather confidence in my spoken German. Perhaps it will also be good for me to attempt to conform more to German culture during our time here. I try to be polite and worry about others’ feelings, but Germans manifest politeness differently. Their culture is more direct and things that would be offensive in America are merely statements of fact or feeling here, not meant to upset. Maybe this is why he so openly said that I didn’t understand what he was saying; maybe as a German he would not find this insulting. Perhaps, then I should be more direct in telling my boss to shut it and trust that yes, I do know German. And while I’m in this tender place, I will remind myself that when I met my supervisor on Friday, his supervisor told me that I had perfect German grammar, and what better compliment could there be to me?

And now some other, miscellaneous reflections:
Despite his instant knack for rubbing me the wrong way, my boss does seem pretty nice. He said that he told his girlfriend what Dan and I are doing and that they found it very courageous of us to come to Germany and work with them. He also said that they would like to have us over sometime if we wanted. (Excellent, as we have no friends.) All of the other coworkers I have met so far seem nice, too, and are mostly mid-20s to mid-30s, so there is potential for friends. I will have legs of steel by the end of our time here. My work is 15-20 minutes away by bike, with a decently long uphill grade each direction. Luckily, the longer is on the way home, so I can get as sweaty as I’d like on the way back. I think it was a good decision to have my top layer in my pocket for the ride there, though; I was plenty sweaty when I arrived at work. I am happy for the ride; I get grumpy without a workout and complained many-a-time last year that I couldn’t exercise enough in Tacoma. Here, I will have to. Plus, the scenery is nothing to complain about. The whole ride is through countryside, with green rolling hills and fall leaves barely gripping the tree branches overhead. The houses are mostly brick with a scattering of half-timbered gems. It’s the kind of setting I fabricate when I daydream of a quiet life. I’ll try to remember my camera next time =)

And, as I wrote all of this, many German words came to me before the English did, which I will take as a very positive sign! There you have it!

Love,
Bryce

If You Want to Look at Us and our Adventures

So, we don't see a way to post photos directly through our blog. Instead, we will create Facebook albums and post the link to view them each time we update them. Let us know if it doesn't work. If it doesn't, get facebook foo.

Love,

Bryce and Dan

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2557285&id=1210796&l=d745fe612a

We've landed

Well, it looks like we’ll really be roughing it here for the next few months.  That’s fine. We’re LVC alums; we’ve lived simply. It’s totally doable and suites us well.  Let’s just say there’s a pull-up bar on the stair landing down to our personal washing machine. HA.

 Scratch that. Let’s say more.  We haven’t lived in a place this nice since our parents’ houses.  I think our landlord (who just returned from running the NY marathon, so apparently he’s Mr. Awesome) said they added this apartment onto their house about 8 years ago.  It’s two stories, with a half bath, kitchen (complete with dishes, pots and pans, everything we need) and living room downstairs.   It looks like the slipper socks I brought along won’t be necessary because we’ve got heated floors. Upstairs looks studio-like, with our bed divided from the rest of the room with sheer hangings.  How posh.  We have a large corner desk (I always wanted one when I grew up) and a lot of space, and then a great bathroom.   They had it all set up with linens, towels, soap, cleaning supplies, even a couple bottles of juice.  Oh, and former Mandelans, there are two poppie decals on our living room wall!

So we’re pretty comfortable…

Of course, all of this means that you should come visit.

Love,

Bryce and Dan

Fall of Berlin Wall Celebration

We’ve entered the time warp of travelling again, when a few days go so quickly yet feel so long past, and we struggle to remember the many enriching experiences we’ve already had, partly from density and partly exhaustion.  With only four days in Germany, we already have much we want to share.  We spent most of the first two days walking around Berlin, miles at a time, intent on wearing ourselves out to insure solid sleep.  Wear ourselves out we did, or our bodies anyways.  Our minds were wide awake between 4 and 8 am on Sunday morning, as our bodies refused to get out of bed.  At 8 we decided to make a final attempt at sleep; we had a safety net in our alarm just in case.  We were foiled, however, by the am/pm. 

Breakfast pastries from the corner bakery are a little harder when you buy them at 3 pm.  We decided to buy a day pass for the trains, which enabled us to visit several points of interest despite the delayed start.  This included the East Side Gallery (freshly restored for the anniversary), the Christmas festival at Potsdamer Platz and the painted dominos to be a part of Monday’s festivities.  Taking it easy on the feet eased our mind-body dissonance, as well, and we were able to awake at a decent - albeit sleepy - 9 am the following morning. 

Monday marked the day we’d planned around and awaited for months: our stay in Berlin rounded off with the Mauerfall celebration.  After an autumn-tinted walk through Tiergarten, a short break to throw out Dexter-related theories as a scuba police scanned the river floor and a “museum-legged”[1] trip to the Pergamon (lots of old stuff), we wandered the area around Brandenburg Gate to stake out the best spot.  We were bundled in our warmest layers and prepared for the cold.  Though the rain persisted all day, it did not faze us; we planned our time in Germany around this very event and felt the excitement grow as we watched preparations over the three days prior.  We arrived two hours before things got underway and chanced getting a little wet to secure a decent view.

The rain did not turn others away either, and people continued to file in well after the program was underway.  Soon a new wall had formed across Brandenburg Gate – a wall of umbrellas.  A lovely view…

When traveling with a partner there are many quiet moments (maybe more so in our introverted duo).  Casual conversation is not always present or necessary, and what remains is a lovely togetherness.  Walking next to someone without dialog can be fulfilling.  Having previously covered conversations of meaning and importance, as well as being able to communicate with a look, a gentle guiding arm or a squeeze of the hand, we are able to travel some distance in nonverbal mode. Bryce and I were pleased, then, to meet who could be considered our first friend abroad.  As the rain continued to fall, we waited for the show to begin, rocking back and forth with the tide of the dense crowd.  Somewhere in the movements of the crowd, a man around our age landed behind us.  He shifted his umbrella over our heads, and it was not until we looked up, no longer feeling drops on our heads, that we noticed his unspoken gesture of kindness.   We turned around to thank him, and he smiled broadly, telling us to come in closer under his umbrella, ella, ella….sorry, I digress.  We accepted and the three of us huddled together.

After, realizing he spoke English despite his demonstrated German fluency, the conversation prospered.  We learned that he was Australian and came to Berlin with work on his master’s in counseling psychology.  He currently works in child protection.  We told him our plans for this year and next and connected over our interests in psychology, German and living abroad.  Throughout the evening, our new friend was personable and courteous, even looked out for us more than once by asking people to pay attention to their umbrellas, protecting our eyeballs and preventing drops from landing repeatedly on our heads.  He was direct with individuals as they pushed through trying to inch toward the front at our expense (major pet peeve…anyone who’s been to a concert with Bryce knows).  He made sure we all had decent views as we craned our necks to find a window through the umbrellas.

The rain eased and the umbrellas came down, Bon Jovi played his latest masterpiece and we awaited the domino wall fall as we enjoyed ourselves handsomely.  Although a little drawn out (especially for those who do not understand Deutsch), the domino wall fall was spectacular and powerful to witness.  The evening ended in fireworks and except for maybe a few who got into squirmishes, everyone began to head home happily albeit wet and cold. 

With plans to retrieve a cup of Gluehwein for the walk back to the hostel, we thanked our friend for his kindness and for sharing and holding his umbrella for the entire 5 hours. We expressed how much we enjoyed conversing and being with him. He extended his kindness by offering his umbrella to us for our walk home, saying he had a spare in his car.  We thanked him for the generous offer and declined, of course, but not without explaining “Oh no, that’s okay.  I have an umbrella right here.”  So much for good impressions.  I’m sure more friends will come.

 

Dan and Bryce

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[1] “Museum-legged” refers to the fact that no matter how much time one spends in a museum his legs are always exhausted immediately.  It may have to do with the pace one has to walk to view exhibits, or the fact that one’s legs know he is learning something.  It is without fail.

And Go

Bob Loblaw. Here’s your blog.

We’ve never blogged before, so no promises that it will be anything worthwhile or consistent.  There were enough requests, though, that we started saying we would, and we’re not keen on liars.

Some will be joint, although our Berlin blog reminded us that we are very different writers. Thus, we’d expect to see more entries from just one or the other, and we’ll try to alternate fairly.  If you get lost in deciphering who wrote what, just look for grammatical errors and we think you’ll figure out the author.  

Our goal is to share our experiences and keep you posted on our lives, but mostly to make sure you don’t forget about us.  We don’t want you to move on to bigger and better friends.

So, the story goes like this: we moved to Germany. We’ll be here until July 1^st. No, Dan does not know German, though he’s making progress in Bryce’s textbook.  (She may want to reference it, too, as she hasn’t used her German since graduating.) 

Until April, we’ll be working at Wittekindshof.  For those of you familiar with Bryce’s LVC placement, it is essentially a gigantic L’Arche community, though not affiliated.  It is a community for people with developmental disabilities, complete with many homes, a school, a church and deacon school, and many workshops for a wide range of interests and abilities.  There are 2500 employees here, so when we say a “gigantic L’Arche” we mean gigantic.  We each have a half-time position; our schedules and responsibilities are yet to be determined, but we are each assigned to a separate set of homes.

Wittekindshof is located in Volmerdingsen.  We live in Bergkirchen.  Both are small towns near the larger small town of Bad Oeynhausen.  Bad Oeynhausen is a small town near the small city of Minden.  The closest large cities you’ve heard of are Hannover (about an hour to the east) and Cologne (about an hour south).

After April, who knows?  That’s that for now.  We’ll do our best to keep you updated. Please keep us updated, too!

Love,

Bryce and Dan