The Friday Morning Translator
I had seen her before.
It was Friday morning. I was half hung-over, from lack of sleep not lack of sense, and was nursing a coffee and a poorly-written paper. Class started and was inanely tepid; the teacher's interaction with the class was the only thing that kept me awake.
I sit in the same spot every week, beside a soft-spoken, well-meaning guy, and my friend Sam. In a similarly rooted spot, sits a woman I assume is a Chinese exchange student. I've noticed her before, she's always sitting there, smiling, taking in the class and opening and closing her text book as the professor occasionally skims over things in the readings.
It was the first morning I noticed a little glimmer of something we had in common: being alone.
I forget what we were all talking about, some cursory discussion of essay topics or something to that effect, when the teacher absent-mindedly wrote "...fending..." on the board in the middle of a sentence.
I don't know why I know it was the word "fending" that got her, but she turns softly to her side, and picks up a little silver (again, an assumption...) pocket translator. She looked so at peace while she did it. I wondered briefly how she could be so calm, when it's at the very least a 14-hour flight to her home country, let alone her province, or town, or village, or city; her friends, her dad, her grandmother, her teachers - wondering how their pupil is faring overseas, her little brother or sister, if she has one.
I can attest to how isolated (and exhilarated) you can feel when you're surrounded by people speaking either your second language, or one you don't fully understand, or for that matter, one you understand to the exact degree of being able to order food. It's a rush to realize you're on your own, "...fending..." for yourself; but it's an intense feeling when you leave yourself to some great, secular fate; going through a metaphoric, Anabaptistic umbilical cord-cutting ceremony of one's very own.
The expression on her face was telling; somewhat tragic, a stoic resolve, a calculated compromise between immersion and unfortunate, language-forced indifference.
It was Friday morning. I was half hung-over, from lack of sleep not lack of sense, and was nursing a coffee and a poorly-written paper. Class started and was inanely tepid; the teacher's interaction with the class was the only thing that kept me awake.
I sit in the same spot every week, beside a soft-spoken, well-meaning guy, and my friend Sam. In a similarly rooted spot, sits a woman I assume is a Chinese exchange student. I've noticed her before, she's always sitting there, smiling, taking in the class and opening and closing her text book as the professor occasionally skims over things in the readings.
It was the first morning I noticed a little glimmer of something we had in common: being alone.
I forget what we were all talking about, some cursory discussion of essay topics or something to that effect, when the teacher absent-mindedly wrote "...fending..." on the board in the middle of a sentence.
I don't know why I know it was the word "fending" that got her, but she turns softly to her side, and picks up a little silver (again, an assumption...) pocket translator. She looked so at peace while she did it. I wondered briefly how she could be so calm, when it's at the very least a 14-hour flight to her home country, let alone her province, or town, or village, or city; her friends, her dad, her grandmother, her teachers - wondering how their pupil is faring overseas, her little brother or sister, if she has one.
I can attest to how isolated (and exhilarated) you can feel when you're surrounded by people speaking either your second language, or one you don't fully understand, or for that matter, one you understand to the exact degree of being able to order food. It's a rush to realize you're on your own, "...fending..." for yourself; but it's an intense feeling when you leave yourself to some great, secular fate; going through a metaphoric, Anabaptistic umbilical cord-cutting ceremony of one's very own.
The expression on her face was telling; somewhat tragic, a stoic resolve, a calculated compromise between immersion and unfortunate, language-forced indifference.
posted by iain.e.marlow at 9:14 AM
7 Comments:
Wow Iain. :)
that's more like it.
Finally, I can please!!
Nara - I'm enjoying your posts from S.Korea, I'm glad you can enjoy mine.
And Alana. Yessss: your approval.
I think my brother experienced something in between both worlds.
We were both born in Willowdale but at home my parents--who were fluent in both Tamil and English--always spoke Tamil to us. When I was a youngin' I had a baby-sitter who spoke English to me so I picked it up in time for school but for my bro's first few weeks of nursery school everyone thought the poor kid was mute because he didn't understand a word anyone was saying, hated the food he was being served, and could barely communicate anything to anyone else.
eep.
Dakshana, that's intense.
When I was in pre-school I always used to get nose bleeds, but simultaneously refused to either admit that I picked my nose when I did, or stop.
Lord--you were one of those kids with the perpetual nosebleeds? I always had a new one in my class every year and we'd be sitting on the floor during story time and then you'd just look down at the kid's shirt and it would have a spattering of blood on it and he would always realize it a good five minutes after everyone else.
Interesting fact: I've never had a nosebleed in my life.
whoops--that was me.
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