here we go again....

I found out today that my future is not hopeless, that I will not be living in my childhood room forever, that I won't have to become a maid: I officially received a spot as a North American Language and Culture Ambassador in Spain. It's a fancy term for what is essentially a teacher's assistant position in a bilingual elementary or middle school. I applied way back in January, and Spain's delightful government has held true to their time-honored tradition of sluggishness. The deadline was pushed back three times, but they FINALLY gave us placements!

I'll be heading to Basque Country in the north, my first choice. As much as I fell in love with Granada last year, I wanted a change of pace, and northern Spain (and Basque Country in particular, for political and cultural regions) is almost like an entirely separate country. The food, weather, landscape, and people are all remarkably different.

San Sebastián, no wonder everyone loves you

Honestly, when I was studying abroad I was loving (almost) every minute of it, but I never thought I would be back to Spain semi-permanently. A year of siestas and tapas was great, but I didn't see myself working or settling there. But Spain's Ministry of Education entices North Americans with an English assistant position of just 12 hours a week, a stipend that is certainly enough to live on, and a sure-fire way to secure a European visa (and delay the 9-5 American cubicle for a year or two). It's an opportunity to work (quarter-time!), travel and continue to study Spanish. From reading several blogs from veterans of the program, I know it won't be a bed of roses. As expected, this is due to Spain's general lack of organization, translating into a program that is said to be less than seamless (sometimes payment is even months delayed! Ugh.) But the more I think about moving back, the more excited I get. A second time around means less culture shock, less language barriers, and more opportunity to make the most of it. I loved Basque Country when I visited it last May with my family, and I'm so thrilled to have the opportunity to get to know it as well as I knew Granada.

I also plan on focusing more on blogging while over there, and making more consistant and polished posts. I'm proud of my first Spain blog, but let's admit, many of the posts read something like, "OMGGGGGG lovvvvvving Spain right now, free tapas are soooo good! Also we stayed out till 7 a.m. at the discoteca, how cool are we and how crazy is this country????" So one goal while in Spain is to grow with my writing. (That said, don't expect a Pulitzer Prize :)

P.S. Check out my post from Basque Country, from my Spain blog. We didn't do much more than lay on beaches and eat (which is obviously why I want to go back).

my future looks dim

I’ve spent lots of mental energy this year memorizing German nouns and generating ways to fall asleep amidst my neighbor’s raging dub-step music. But I've spent substantially less time considering what comes next. With less than a quarter left of college, maybe today should be the day I give some thought to my future.

So I head into the Career Services Center. After browsing the shelves (wishing I had done this three years ago), I decide to take an online careers test. It involves checking off boxes for specific programs of interest, special qualifications, school subjects you like, desired hours, and positions you want to avoid.

Imagining how my favorite classes in Linguistics, Psychology, Foreign Languages, and History might translate into a real-world paycheck, I mark hospitality and tourism; education and training; marketing; and human services.  I give myself mostly high marks for all forms of basic skills (“proficient” in Microsoft Word), and I’m not too picky when it comes to working hours or positions. Hell, give me the graveyard shift! I’m young and fresh.

My test yields 17 careers. Possibilities! Direction! Maybe today will be the day I set out on the path of adulthood. I never had a Bat Mitzvah or Confirmation, but perhaps a visit to Career Services will be my coming-of-age ritual.

I glance at the list.  Nearly a third of my options revolve around the food industry.  "Chef. Restaurant cook. Industrial/Cafeteria Cook. Short Order Cook. Fast Food Cook." The relevance to my Linguistics major escapes me. Is this all my degree is good for? Besides,   Be I'm a vegetarian who never eats fast food, so with the latter I wouldn't even benefit from the employee discount.

I'm a little spooked, and not just from wondering why I bothered to go to college.  I checked no box indicating the many hours I spend glued to the Food Network, and yet the computer seemed to intuitively sense my love for the show Chopped. Or maybe it discerned that the whole time I was taking the test, I was dreaming about the grilled cheese I’d make when I got home. Intuition has its limits, though: The computer failed to register that any inclination toward a career in the food industry had been thoroughly extinguished the day before at my dining hall job, when I removed the fibrous ends of sugar snap peas by hand for two hours. Anyway, I'm graduating from a liberal arts university, not Le Cordon Bleu.

I scroll on. Please let this quiz enlighten me. Please point me on my future path. There has got to be a high-paying Eat, Pray, Love sort of job out there. How did Elizabeth Gilbert make a living by eating pasta and meditating?

Next up, I read: Director of Religious Activities.

Perhaps that’s the “pray” part of the job. But is this test some sort of prank? I can count on one hand the number of times I've been to church. I’m an atheist. And would God approve of the beer pong socials I’d plan as Activities Director?

I reach the bottom of the short list, where the computer program suggests a final career option: Maid/Cleaner

So THIS is my college dream, come to fruition! Why my parents pinched pennies to finance my education! Maybe a Bachelor's degree is the new prerequisite for a lifetime of mopping in this ever-competitive job market. Did I mention my GPA is 3.92? That I'm hardworking, outgoing, and reliable? That I've scrubbed our shower and dusted our furniture exactly never this year?

I adjust my search in the side-bar to include my preferred salary range. Since it's too late to study computer engineering, I don't see myself making a fortune, but I want to be comfortable and independent. So I check the box for a reasonable $60,000 and up, hoping that more sophisticated titles like “Dean of Admissions, Harvard" might replace the entry-level jobs that seem to be my future.

A message pops up on the screen: “We're sorry, no matches could be found to fit all the selected criteria." Apparently both money and job fulfillment really is too much to ask.

Career Services has an entire wall devoted to “How-To" sheets; rows of GRE-prep books; tips on resume-writing, securing internships, or asking for letters of recommendation. But even they don't have a clue what I should do with my life. Perhaps on the far-back wall, tucked between “So You Want To Be A Therapist?" and “Jobs In The U.S. Government," there should be a special pamphlet just for me: “Learn To Settle: The How-To On Flipping Burgers."

spacial relations

           One of the textbooks for my Endangered Language class, Dying Words, is simply blowing my mind. I thought I'd share here some interesting facts I've come across, just to prove that reading for class can sometimes be worth it :)

           There are some (actually many!) languages in the world that don't use relative terms such as right or left  to describe spatial relations, but instead use an absolutist system. This refers to cardinal directions: north, south, east, west. So instead of saying, “My car is the one on the right," you would say “Mine is the eastern-most car," or what have you.
           This means that speakers of these languages are always intrinsically spatially oriented. Linguists did a study to test whether speakers of these languages had a better internal sense of direction than those that spoke a language that uses relative terms, such as English or Spanish. They went out into the middle of the Australian bush and asked speakers of the language Guugu Yimithirr to point to the direction of various well-known locations, and then checked these responses with a compass. The subjects pointed in the right direction 96 PERCENT OF THE TIME. Automatically. They did this in multiple studies, including in closed examination rooms with no windows. I hope your jaw just dropped.
           Think how hard it would be to learn this type of language, coming from an English background (or any other language that uses a relative system). The author explains the difficult process of learning Kayardild (a language indigenous to Australia, with only 23 speakers left!). He had to be acutely aware of his surroundings at every moment, because even the greeting in this language touched upon spacial relations: there is no word for hello, and instead a typical first encounter might be something like, “Where are you going?" “I'm going northward."
           And here I am, thinking it's nearly impossible to memorize all the genders and cases in German. Now I see I have it easy--just imagine if I had to whip out a compass any time I wanted to say hello to someone!

children of linguists

          What's the first thing you would ask when inquiring about someone's toddler? I would think to say something like, Has he started walking yet? How's the potty training going? Has he developed a keen interest in train sets and dinosaur figurines?
          Today I overheard a conversation between my linguistics professor and a graduate student in my class. It went like this:

Student: How's your little girl doing?
Prof: She's great, thanks. Her phonetics are still lacking; she can't quite produce consonant                clusters yet. Her syntax is really advanced though.
Student: Oh really? How so?
Prof: The other day she said to me,  “I don't like these crackers. Are you a fan?”
(Group laughter; a few expressive “wow”s. General consensus of amazement and approval.).
Student: How's her vowel space?
Prof: It's coming along. She's mastered several dipthongs already.

          At first I assumed they were joking. I thought they were recognizing their own linguistic obsessions and mocking themselves for it. I expected the conversation to turn at any moment to The Terrible Twos or first play dates. But no, it just hovered around vowel and consonant production. Linguists may have just officially beaten out astrophysicists for the Number One Nerd slot.

language shift

            In my linguistics class this past week we've been talking a lot about Language Shift, or how language undergoes changes over time. This normally happens over generations, although sometimes it's not as slow of a process as one might think. Just look at slang: my parents aren't saying things like “I domed that burrito in two minutes and now I have a sketch stomachache." Language shift is also apparent in immigrant families. Let's say, during a period of political repression or economic hardship in X country (take your pick, there are too many--we'll go with Mexico), two parents sent their child to the U.S. to seek opportunity, while the parents were forced to stay behind. That child grew up bilingually, retaining her Spanish and also learning English. Then she had kids of her own, but the societal pressures to speak English made it difficult for this woman to effectively pass on any Spanish, so her children grew up English-only. Therefore, these kids cannot communicate with their own grandparents. This happens all the time (sadly).

                                                                   BUT...

           What I just heard about from a girl at work, and which struck me as SHOCKING, is that she has trouble communicating with her own parents! (And not in the angsty teen I-can't-even-talk-to-my-own-parents-they-just-don't-understand-me-way). I'm talking literally, this girl has trouble having a conversation with her mother and father. They immigrated to the U.S. from Korea when this girl was seven. Her parents have lived in Southern California for over ten years and have picked up hardly a word of English, while this girl has lost much of her Korean, due to school and societal factors like English-speaking friends. Conversations in the house with her parents were apparently not enough to keep her Korean up, and so she has lost much of the vocabulary. She told me that she often has to use Google translate to ask them important things, like help on filling out her FAFSA! I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Can you imagine???
           This is the first instance I've ever heard of such immediate language shift. Linguists always like to say that it's not a good or bad process, it's just natural. But I listen to this story and imagine this girl struggling to have a simple conversation with her own parents, and I can't help but feel that she sort of got the short end of the stick on this whole language shift thing.

birthday part II: blacklight bowling

After the amazing Chopped dinner, my roommate and I headed out with some of my friends from work to bowl, since every Wednesday night is college night--basically free--at Zodo's. I've been once in my four years here, so I figured my birthday would be a fun time to try something different. UCSB provides a free shuttle to all students on college night, and we happened to be the only ones who used it, so we basically got privately chauffeured in a luxury party bus to and from the alley. Also, Happy Hour started the minute we got there! We had to wait an hour for our lane, which turned out to not. be. a. problem. Here's one reason why turning 22 is better than turning 21: all your friends are already legal, so they can buy you birthday drinks!

Cheers to that!

Blacklight bowling was awesome. I got one strike, too many fouls, almost all gutter balls, and the lowest score out of both teams for both games. Turns out, you can't have EVERYTHING on your birthday! :)

A sweet action shot, two second before I fell into the lane. That's why you shouldn't change out of bowling shoes until ALL ROUNDS are completed. 

Blacklight bowling. A new Wednesday tradition?

22nd birthday

            I turned 22 on Wednesday, which seems like a boring year except for the palindrome factor. But in fact, it was one of the greatest birthdays I've ever had, thanks to amazing housemates and friends (and calls and cards from family!).
           The day started out regularly enough; it was beautifully sunny and 70 degrees in February, and I skipped two out of three classes because birthday girls have that right. I knew my housemates were planning something due to mysterious notes like “Jenny: stay out of the freezer,” but I didn't know what. It turns out, they picked up on my love of the Food Network show Chopped, since many a night has been spent attempting to do homework while watching episode after episode. So the four of them reenacted the show for me: Deniz made the appetizer (corn and cabbage salad), Leah made the main course (homemade mac 'n cheese with ham), Maddy made the dessert (frozen Reese's chocolate peanut butter pie), and Kaitlin made the drink (citrus vodka lemonade). They all plated their dishes with artistic touches, wore customized chef hats, and individually presented their courses to me, and then explained what they would do with the 10,000 dollar prize. I went down the line and tasted each dish, playing the role of absurd judge/food critic, just like on the show: “I’m really getting the strong aged cheddar undercurrents of this dish, and there is such a pleasingly creamy texture that truly enhances the overall presentation." Then we all sat down and ate together. It was the most delicious meal ever, and honestly the most thoughtful idea for a birthday. I couldn't have asked for anything better!

Chefs Kaitlin, Maddy, Leah, and Deniz: Chopped champions

P.S. Half of you will read this post and think, “How adorable!!" The other half will question your friendship with me after reading this because I have just expressed such an unhealthy obsession with a cooking show. 

P.P.S.: Post on the amazing themed party to come!