Communication – Page 19

Apparently, studying abroad is an amusement park.

According to the Office of Internationalization and just about any published resource on the topic, the emotions associated with study abroad is most like the Boomerang ride. You know, that U-shaped ride at amusement parks that straps you in, pulls you up to the highest point on the track, hands you and your queasy stomach over the cruel hands of gravity, and eventually cascades you back up to the other incline of the U. They call this the “Cultural Adaptation Curve.” But I like my rollercoaster analogy better.

PLEASE NOTE: I am fully aware that cultural adaptation and homesickness are technically two different things, but they also very intertwined in my mind.

culture_shock_curve_new — For you math-minded folks.

Let’s hope this is wrong, considering a semester abroad is only about 3.5 months long, which would mean we would all be blissfully ignorant for half the time, then come home in the gutter of hostility.

In my humble opinion, homesickness is more like a daily ride on the Six Flags’ Tower of Doom. This ride straps you into a 250 foot tall totem pole-looking tower and, once again, lets gravity toy with your stomach and self-respect for a never-ending amount of time. Disneyland has it’s own version of this, called the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, if you’re more familiar with that. If you can’t tell from my description, this is consequentially my least favorite ride of them all.

I am about to hit the one-month mark of my arrival in Rome and homesickness tends to be a daily experience on the Tower of Doom for me, and it has been this way since the day I arrived. Thankfully, it only comes in small doses and I only feel these low, gut-wrenching emotions when I’m sitting around the apartment, doing nothing in particular, or when I’m at school without my friends.

I tend to struggle when it comes to making friends since I’m somewhat introverted. Thankfully, the housing director for ISA did an impeccable job in my apartment’s housing assignments as all of my roommates have become my best friends here, making my job of finding a niche much easier. However, when I’m left to fend for myself at school, I long for the days at DU where I can always greet someone I know as I walk through campus.

As for homesickness settling in when I’m doing nothing in my apartment, I realize I’m being rather hypocritical. In my last post, Il Dolce Far Niente, I described how I was “homesick for being lazy.” I take that back. I’ve reverted to my old ways where I need to be doing something productive in order to stay happy. Sitting around doing nothing in my apartment does terrible things for my psyche. My roommate, Julie and I discussed this yesterday and we seem to be in agreement that sitting on our laptops, refreshing our Facebook newsfeeds for hours does keep us feeling connected to home, but it also tends to be a waste of our time in a new country.

Therefore, I am left in a bit of a pickle. If I can’t be busy with extracurriculars all the time, in my attempt to learn how to relax, but must also find a way to keep myself from drowning in a sea of homesick blues, what’s a girl to do?

Here are my tips on combatting homesickness. I title them thus:

“An Overachiever’s Guide to Overcoming Homesickness”

1. Accept and embrace. I have a tendency to try to distract myself from my problems rather than facing them like a real woman. But inspiration against this came from “Eat Pray Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert (my bible) in one of my favorite literary passages:

“When I get lonely these days, I think: So be lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience.”

Distraction tends to lead to bottling, which leads to taking that pressure and frustration out on others who probably don’t deserve it. I would have to say that this one is particularly important if you are attempting a long-distance relationship such as I am. My boyfriend and I are much happier when we are being honest with each other about how much we miss each other and how miserable we are without each other, rather than stifling those emotions with the intention of not throwing more baggage on the other person. As I said, this only leads to bottling and inadvertent confusion.

2. You aren’t alone. Once you’ve managed to admit your homesickness to yourself, try admitting it to someone else. I guarantee you they are feeling the same thing or have felt it at one point in their life. When Julie asked me yesterday if I’m feeling homesick it was like a huge weight off my shoulders to know that she was feeling the exact same thing. We even made a vow to take each other out exploring in the future.

If you’re lonely, start being lonely with someone else. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll come to the realization…that you’re not actually lonely. *gasp*

2. Find a hobby. Mine? Taking pictures and eating. Not to be confused with eating out of boredom, I am on a determined hunt for the best and most affordable food in Italy. At home in Denver, my hobby tends to be filling up my schedule as much as humanly possible. As much as I’ve always loved photography and food, I haven’t had hardly any time to do these things in college. Now seems like the perfect time to dabble and revel in these two old loves of mine.

3. Go outside. Insert some scientific fact about how much sunlight improves your mood. On top of sunshine, exploring and observing also allows you to learn your way around your new city. Trust me, when you learn the lay of the land and how to get to things on your own, it will stop feeling “new” and start feeling like “home.”

4. Enjoy the little things. It’s very easy while living in another country to get bogged down by the seemingly negative differences between your host country and the place from whence you came. The best way to get past these moments is to turn it around and find the silver lining.

For example, I can’t express to you in words how much my roommates and I miss Target–one mega store where you can conveniently buy absolutely anything you could ever possibly need. Italy runs on many small specialty stores: frutterias (fruits and vegetables), formaggerias (dairy and cheeses), farmacias (pharmacy/personal hygiene), electronics stores, clothing stores, underwear stores, sunglasses stores, home decoration stores…I could go on forever. In one mindset, this is horribly inconvenient. But on the flip side, fruterias have the freshest and cheapest produce because they can afford to do so. If you’re into the whole anti-monopolizing corporations, they’re pretty much nonexistent under this business model as all of these little shops are family owned by the most friendly people. There’s ample good qualities if you look for them.

My favorite way of enjoying the little things is, of course, my focus on food during this trip. Every successful meal is a win in my book. I will shamelessly admit that a good meal or snack automatically makes any day better. Case in point: I started writing a blog post earlier this week about the less than successful trip to Assisi we took last weekend. Many things went wrong on that day but you know what didn’t?

This:

This is rocciata (roh-CHA-tah)–essentially, Italian apple strudel. Flaky, gooey, nutty, sugary, awesome-y rocciata. Perhaps instead of remembering the negative things, that day can live on the memory of this little piece confectionary heaven. It’s the little things that count.

“Chow” for now,

– Cheyenne Michaels, DUSA Blogger –

Teva-deva, teva-deva, teva-deva, teva-deva”

I am sitting in my room repeating these nonsense words in quick succession.

“I edited it. I edited it. I edited it. I edited it.”

Along with that sentence.

“TdZzzzzzzz…”

Sadly, that is the only sound I can produce.

I am trying to learn how to trill my r’s.

The trilled “r” sound is pertinent to properly spoken Spanish. That doesn’t mean it comes naturally to every Spanish speaker on the planet. It is, in fact, the last sound that Spanish-speaking children can successfully produce. Apparently, some adults never master the trilled “r”. They are labeled as having an official articulation disorder. I am afraid that I may be of that number.

As I’ve mentioned before, growing up in Texas means that you are exposed to many nuances of Spanish language and culture when you are young. In grade school, kids would run around the playground rolling their r’s extravagantly in exotic words such as “maracas” or “rojo”. Try as I might, I could never join in. “It’s easy!” they’d say. It was impossible.

While my classmates were happily trilling away like helicopters or purring cats, I was tackling a speech impediment. Each week, I would visit the school’s speech therapist, who helped me learn how to pronounce “th”, “ch”, “sh”, and “j”. It took me years of practice, and I still have trouble pronouncing these sounds, especially when I am tired. If I am not careful, I can easily slip into a lisp (not that this would be a problem in Spain). I wonder if my inability to pronounce these sounds when I was younger, and my inability to roll my r’s now, are one in the same problem.

A few days ago, my host father, Juan, told me I needed to practice trilling my r’s. He taught me this tongue-twister, which Spanish children use to practice their r sounds:

El perro de san Roque no tiene rabo,

porque Ramón Ramirez se lo ha robado.

In English, it means:

The dog of san Roque has no tail,

because Ramón Ramirez stole it.

The excess of r sounds in this sentence is meant to help one learn how to place the trilled r in everyday speech.

Yesterday in class, my professors taught us this same sentence. They also stressed the importance of learning how to properly place the trilled r. Apparently, there are only two times when one trills the r. Either when:

1) It is the first letter, like in Roque or rabo

2) There is a double r in the middle of a word, like in guitarra or churro

It is a good idea to repeat tricky sentences like El perro de san Roque until you are use to using the trilled r whenever you speak. That is, if you can trill your r’s in the first place.

Welcome to rudimentary Spanish pronunciation 101, where we learn to roll our r’s.

As I’ve said, I can’t roll an r to save my life. Yesterday, when my classmates, once again, were trilling away with ease, I tried to imitate them. It didn’t go very well. While we were walking down the street after class, my friends looked on with worried glances as I continued to try to make the appropriate sound

“I don’t know how to describe how to do it,” they said. In their attempts to help, they looked at me with intent faces and pointed at their mouths while they trilled. I tried to do the same, but ended up just blowing raspberries or hissing. I think a few Spaniards on the street were a bit worried at that point, too.

This morning, over café con leche, I told my host mother, Maria, that I was having trouble pronouncing my r’s correctly. She too said that she wasn’t sure how to describe how to do it, and also pointed at her mouth while she demonstrated how to trill: “perro”. In turn, I demonstrated my inaptitude at the process.

She told me that it was alright, a lot of Spanish-speaking children take years to perfect the “r”. I asked her if there are any adults that can’t trill their r’s.

“Some,” she said, “I know some people who can’t. But there aren’t many, because children learn when they are young”.

“Is it a problem?” I asked her.

“A little bit, because there is a difference between pero and perro, you see, but usually they can be understood”.

I told her I would be practicing my pronunciation, so if she heard me making strange noises around the house, that would be the reason why.

So, I went to my trusty advisor, the internet, and googled “how to roll your r’s”.

The first thing the websites tell you to do is to relax your tongue. Hence, the nonsense words I mentioned earlier. Basically, repeat anything that makes you tap the tip of your tongue against the space between your two front teeth and the roof of your mouth. This should loosen up the muscles in your tongue necessary for trilling and position your tongue in the right spot at the same time.

Once your tongue is nice and loose, float the tip of your tongue in the space between your two front teeth and the roof of your mouth. Apparently, this is called the alveolar ridge, for those who want to know. Next, attempt to pronounce a “dr” or “tr” sound with your tongue in this position. The added “d” or “t” should help, because English speakers naturally pronounce d’s and t’s with their tongues in the appropriate position for trilled r’s. Thus, the “d” and “t” sounds make it easier to roll onto the r sound.

I’ve been practicing all morning, and I’ve gotten it so I can roll onto the “r” from the “d” or “t”, but only for a moment before I lose it and have to repeat my tongue twisters again.

Maria comes to my door and checks on my progress. I try to demonstrate my limited newfound ability, but I don’t think she can tell the difference. We agree that I need more practice.

There is a rumor that some people simply can’t roll their r’s because of a genetic defect. I’ve read that if you can’t fold your tongue vertically, this is a sign that you will never be able to trill. Apparently Spanish-speakers also recognize a defect called Ankyloglossia, or “Tounge-tie”, which means that frenulum (the tissue that connects your tongue to base of your mouth) is too short. If you have “tongue-tie”, you cannot roll your r’s. People with “tongue-tie” have this defect surgically corrected as children. I don’t know if I have any of these problems (and I am not going under the knife in order to roll my r’s anytime soon), but maybe I am one of those who simply can’t trill.

Then again, I’ve also heard that the “genetic defect” rumor is complete nonsense as well. Here’s hoping.

Sites to help you learn how to pronounce the trilled r sound:

Tongue twister: http://www.tebytib.com/gest_web/proto_Seccion.pl?rfID=7&arefid=1647

Consonants: http://www.rocketlanguages.com/spanish/resources/pronunciation_spanish_consonants.php

A step-by-step guide: http://www.spanish-only.com/2008/03/how-to-roll-your-r/

More methods: http://www.wikihow.com/Roll-Your-%22R%22s

A linguist’s advice: http://linguistlist.org/issues/12/12-57.html

How to roll your R’s: http://wander-argentina.org/2011/06/how-to-roll-your-rs/

What if you can’t trill?: http://wander-argentina.org/2011/07/what-if-you-cant-trill-your-r/

— Emily Bowman, DUSA Student Blogger