So it’s Wednesday afternoon, and I am coercing the part of me that longs for a nap just now, to make my finger-tips speak a little instead…it seemed a good compromise between not sleeping now and not doing homework yet :).
I sit on a twin-size bed in a white-washed dorm-room thinking of all of you—
Good days!—long, thick days of push-pulled consciousness and cognition. I am happy, but oh-so-tired, and miss you, but oh-so-fulfilled…
I wanted to come here and recount some of these first days, both for you and for myself… Saturday after I wrote you, I slept maybe an hour!—body would not sift down, like wiggle-nerves before Christmas. We all woke up at 4am and I was driven to the airport early… The flights were uneventful, other than a few air-pocket-hiccups and a quick plane switch in Denver. When I boarded the second plane, I peered down the aisles, reading the seat numbers and letters, and as I made eye-contact with the area and then the people sitting there, I realized that it was an 8 year old boy sitting across from his brothers, who—no joke—checked me out, exchanged glances with his brothers, and then asked one of them for a piece of gum in a loud, braggy voice :)—Really funny and exaggerated from an 8 year old! The whole rest of that ride was spent with him asking me how much time had passed—about every 10 minutes—while he filled me in on what Grand Forks was like, and how there are “really great bike trails at my real dad’s house”~
We touched down in North Dakota early, and I instantly grabbed some food and a coffee, as my cute conversations and incessant “are-we-there-yet?-trills” didn’t allow me to catch up yet on sleep. I waited then for Bethany, another SIL-UND student that would be flying into Fargo, as we were going to rent a car and drive the last hour from Fargo to Grand Forks. She’s wonderful!—and she was so even-keel for just having met me…which came SO in handy when half an hour into our drive, I saw red lights and a cop pull out behind me! Apparently ND is MUCH more stringent on speed limits :) and the 5-mpg’s over-the-limit that GA police have told me is more than acceptable was highly suspect in this new environment!
The cop was kind, if a little suspicious, since our rental happened to have Wyoming tags, a South Dakota registration, and a Minnesota insurance card(!), but once we explained where we were going and where were from, we all loosened up—
Besides this, the drive was lovely!—wide open sky—almost making the land look convex in its extreme flatness, bending wide its surface to bear the weight of the clouds~ It made our hearts feel yellow!
Campus brought us to a small city—there seem to be a hundred buildings to UND’s campus, but they’ve managed serenity in the midst of this. There is a small winding creek—which I’ve been informed is a cooley instead…a slightly swampy, reed-surrounded stream that is almost still (“it will stink later, just wait,” I was told)… But it is beautiful when it reflects the Dakota sky. There have been SO many people to meet, and every conversation exists inside this pressure cooker of depth!—in my 1 hour drive with Bethany, I believe we know more about what matters to one another than it usually takes people a month to know—and it has been the same with most of the people I’ve met, probably because there is the pre-existing conditions that everyone has traveled here for the same reasons, and time has warped to fit the urgent, quick-pace of the program.
We live, eat, and learn in the same living space as our professors, and the environment is like none other that I have experienced. These beginning days keep waffling between elation and exhaustion, and I’m definitely re-acclimating to being a student! It’s been so long since I’ve pushed my mind so hard, and I find at times that it’s pushing its hands up against the walls of my skull in protest :). Monday, we had orientation and we bought our textbooks, and received our pre-first-class homework… For Phonetics alone, I worked my way through the first two chapters, fumble-finding the vocabulary and preparing for the first class the next day. By this first class, these chapters were reviewed and the third one assigned! Second Language Acquisition placed each student into a group, and for the summer I will be learning Sindhi (a language from Sindh, Pakistan) to assess my aptitude and to teach us the foundations of language-learning using a method where we cannot speak a word of it for several weeks!—SUCH a challenge for my tongue that longs to contort :). For now, we use T.P.R. (total physical response) to teach our minds the language using different lobes of the brain, and skipping the usual route of translating a new language to ourselves using the one we already know. Syntax & Morphology is fantastic, and this professor makes me laugh-out-loud daily~ The fourth class I’ve only had once so far, but it’s Sociolinguistics, and I’m thoroughly enthralled.
Though I’ve scrupulously been struggling with moments of frustration at my own intake pace, heart has been whispering its own contentment.
I think for now, this is enough :). I love you, miss you, and am thankful for anyone keeping up with this or finding any interest in it! Thank you, THANK YOU, to those who have written me.. PLEASE know that it has meant more to me than I can express, and that I will truly try to respond soon! With fervor, moni
Posted on 10 June 2009 at 6:12 PM Comments (0)
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