Me Talk Pretty One Day, too.

Although I had three years of university German as well as a summer semester learning the language in Dresden, sometimes I feel lost. I was talking to my friend Jacqueline who lives in Taiwan as an English teacher and she told me that my recent unhappiness is, culture shock. For a long time I figured that why I would be experiencing culture shock in some ways, that I'd be above any major problems. That turned out to not be true I guess. I've really begun to miss American traditions, holidays and just regular kindness as of late. I'm quite excited to be going home next weekend though. However, the language doesn't help. I understand the majority of conversations around me but sometimes I get quite nervous as I'm checking out at the grocery store or when I need to talk to someone at the pharmacy or something like this. David Sedaris in his book Me Talk Pretty One Day describes his life and language training while moving to France from New York. And so he writes:

My fear and discomfort crept beyond the borders of the classroom and accompanied me out onto the wide boulevards. Stopping for a coffee, asking directions, depositing money in my bank account: these things were out of the question, as they involved having to speak. Before beginning school, there'd been no shutting me up, but now I was convinced that everything I said was wrong. When the phone rang, I ignored it. If someone asked me a question, I pretended to be deaf. I knew my fear was getting the best of me when I started wondering why they don't sell cuts of meat in vending machines.

My only comfort was the knowledge that I was not alone. Huddled in the hallways and making the most of our pathetic French, my fellow students and I engaged in the sort of conversation commonly overheard in refugee camps.
"Sometime me cry alone at night."
"That be common for I, also but be more strong, you. Much work and someday you talk pretty. People start love you soon. Maybe tomorrow, okay."
Unlike the French class I had taken in New York, here there was no sense of competition. When the teacher poked a shy Korean in the eyelid with a freshly sharpened pencil, we took no comfort in the fact that, unlike Hyeyoon Cho, we all knew the irregular past tense of the verb to defeat. In all fairness, the teacher hadn't meant to stab the girl, but neither did she spend much time apologizing, saying only, "Well, you should have been kl;ja;dfkj more afkjakjf."

So I have more confidence than that, but I still couldn't tell you the irregular past tense of to defeat.