I had a long talk with a young thoughtful woman named Lena from Bulgaria, and she was asking about my life in Los Angeles. “Every time I come to Denmark,” I told her, “I feel a belonging that I haven’t really felt in years. Honestly, I’m not sure if it’s that I do belong here, or that it’s just such a stark difference from the sixteen years I spent not belonging in Los Angeles.” It’s a hard city to find your place, your people or your purpose, and after years of striking out, you start to think that those simple things aren’t for you. At Askov those things feel within my grasp. “Los Angeles is only one city in the huge state of California,” I promised her, “It’s so much more.” I told her about the coast, the sequoias, the mountains, the Pacific Crest Trail, and all the produce they grow in the central valley. All of it is California. When I told her it took me seven-and-a-half hours to drive to my parents’ property, her jaw dropped.
“And you’re still in California?”
“Oh yeah, and it could take you another seven hours to get to the Oregon border.”
This idea blew her mind. She told me that it would only take five hours to drive through the entire country Bulgaria. I’ve noticed this about a few of the people here. I don’t think they really comprehend how far away I live from New York, and it surprises them that I don’t know the geographical details of the East Coast. But I told Lena that it was weird for me to imagine if each of our states spoke a different language. Can you imagine? What if Nevada, Oregon and Washington all spoke a different language? That’s what it’s like for Europeans, so they treat language study much differently than the US does.
Most students here start by speaking their native language and English. “We have to learn English,” Lena told me, “because nobody else speaks Bulgarian.” Then the go on the their first foreign language, which for Lena was Norwegian. Danish is almost always a second foreign language, because “Only Denmark and maybe ten other people speak Danish,” Lena joked. When I told her how regretful I was that I didn’t take more language classes, she guessed that I had more time for other electives. They take their language classes in a whole separate school. They arrived at 8am and didn’t leave til 6pm—studying the same language the entire time. I took high school French twice a week for an-hour-and-a-half. Lena laughed. Of course I wasn’t going to master a language that way.
“But you were able to pursue your acting, writing and art,” she pointed out. I hadn’t really thought about the amount of time it’s taken these people to learn these languages and compared it to how I might have spent that same time. Don’t get me wrong, I still wish I would have committed myself to language study earlier in life, but Lena brought a perspective that I hadn’t considered. First, American language classes come up far too short for any level of mastery, and students have more time to spend pursuing extracurriculars. God knows I had my fair share!
I’m going to cut this short, because I still have some homework to get through tonight. I can’t believe we’re almost halfway done. It’s going by too fast. Until tomorrow, Vi ses.
