One of my favorite literary characters once said, "I never could get the hang of Thursdays."
I feel that way, but about Mondays. Much like Arthur Dent, the character from Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 5-part science-fiction trilogy (Google it if you're thinking I'm an idiot at this point), I too am throw off by the flow of the week rather easily. However, much unlike Mr. Dent, I am not facing the destruction of the earth, and I don't have a best friend from a far away alien star system.
I digress.
Mondays are weird for me. I call them my "Three Language and Temporal Distortion Day." Why, you ask? I'm glad I made you ask! I have my most intensive Hebrew class, in German, which is then immediately followed by a complex philosophy taught in very formal English by Eichstätt's favorite Irish man. In short, from 10:00- 14:00 on Mondays, I have to operate back and forth among three separate languages, two of which I am nowhere near fluent in. I am in awe and envy of my friends here who speak their Mother Language, German, and English fluently. I don't know how they aren't mentally exhausted. Moreover, they all learned their additional languages around 16 years of age. I certainly have at least that much time invested with German (My dad spoke it a little growing up, so I've been hearing it for awhile), and Hebrew is pretty new, but the process and prospect of that much linguistic switching hurts me... Literally, it's a guarantee that I am one step short of a migraine every Monday, which is why Mondays are usually my Döner Kebab day. Those Turkish sandwiches are magical and medicinal, I swear. I feel like my purchases at the Istanbul Imbiss should be covered by the health insurance I have here. I mean, they do have a substantial amount of lean protein, and I always load mine with the vegetables that are high in fiber, and the capsaicin found in the abundant amount of spices I put on there are a great anti-histamine. All I'm saying is I might need to write a proposal letter to my insurance company here to get more Kebabs. They do just make my body feel better in my times of great need.
And yet again, I digress.
Mondays throw me off because the middle of my day, usually the time I use to get organized and take care of minor tasks and homework, is taken up, and I am thrown into a salad spinner of linguistics. So much so, when a friend greeted me in English one Monday in recent memory, I responded in Deubrewglish. Yes, that's right. Here's what the conversation sounded like:
FRIEND: Hello, Daniel! How are you?
DANIEL: Ach! Shalom! Er, um. Good. Ich am gut... Yeah, ok.
FRIEND: German... Or?
DANIEL: We können later über this talkin'.... Oiv....
FRIEND: Um...
DANIEL: I... Zuhause... Bis später.
And I walked away. That's Monday. I am bombarded with so much information in three different languages that I my brain fries out a bit. In two months' time, I have not gotten the hang of Mondays.
That being said, my languages are greatly improving, and when I can focus on the other days of the week, everything goes smoothly. Certainly, if anything, I have a new appreciation for language learning in another culture, especially since I am learning my third language here in my second language. That gets complicated, but I am surviving, and I am determined to use the things I am learning about this whole process to help someone in a similar boat in the future, because we all need a boost sometimes.