when it's time to say goodbye

December 1, 2009 -


The feeling for the first two weeks in CPH.


I always thought that it’s hard to understand foreign people. It’s their absolutely different characters that make me a bit afraid to understand their insides. Just like a kind of premonition. The more I try to know them, the more the differences between us expose – things may be like that. It’s impossible to understand them, I always thought so. I didn’t have fluent language as the champion of the fragile self inside me; anyone could easily read in my face, and discover the timidity on it. I’m not used to this kind of myself. I knew how to cover up my fear and hesitancy before, when I faced difficulties. But now……I felt so insecure without my familiar language with me.




I knew how to introduce myself. The ‘meet-them-well’ trained me well. In this endless self-introduce, all the things that flashed across my brain were stereotypes, one by one…Italians are passionate and love pasta…Germans are conscientious and love sausage…Koreans are patriotic and love pickles…how frustrating the self-introduce was. I couldn’t remember their names, and all things remained in my head are just their countries and my countless pathetic stereotypes. Thanks to self-introduce, the distance between their inner worlds and mine ‘shortened by approximately one centimeter’.




It’s easy to convince myself to stay in my room, cuz I knew I’d transformed to “the timid girl who comes from a far-away country” again once I went out, and I hated that. However…I love to conquer challenges, especially to find out the secret behind the “unknown”—the secret may be a surprise, or a bomb—the curiosity gave me the courage.

Staying in the room like a coward…it’s not like me.




So I went out.












Those days here.




After going out, the huge world swallowed me. The impact was no other than the one caused by an atom bomb once I decided to open my mind to the exotic culture. BOMB, and what left in my head were just fragments of my old values and the world I’ve known before. What is this place, am I still on earth? Unbelievable. But yes I’m still on earth; it’s just that I spent too much time hiding in an island before.




After being conscious from the shock, I felt the European atmosphere, which is so fragrant and ancient, permeating my body, my every single cell. The impression that Asian world left in my mind was diluted by the real life here. Everything I touched was real: the spacious streets, the fresh air, the colorful houses, and the faded statues. Light-Blond hair and sky-blue eyes. Danish, English and French floated in the air…




The most real thing is emotion. Friendship, love, these deep affections that I didn’t expect before, have nurtured inside me even before I noticed. After going out, I have friends whom I want to cherish. Even though I struggled in the swamp of language for quite a time, I found out that nothing will stop you from expressing your feelings or emotions if you really want to. There’re many ways that people could communicate with each other; The Tower of Babel didn’t block everything…




Are foreign people hard to be understood? No. Culture asides, people around the world are the same from the intrinsic view. The shared kitchen in my dorm is just like the common room of our FM department – big boys crossed their legs and watched football games…desks covered by books and laptops during the period of exam...Gradually cordial feeling replaced the alienation; all of these seems so different yet so alike.




The food we’re used to is different; the backgrounds we grew up are different; the languages we’re familiar with are different – however, there’s one thing that we shared: we all long for freedom, friendship and love. And this compensates for everything.









When it’s going to be over soon..

If you really like one person, you’ll do your best to understand what he/she likes, and try to think from his/her perspective.




I found out the secret behind “the unknown”. The exchange life’s almost over, the unknown is no longer unknown, and the secret was already told by time—




I won’t tell the secret. But it is the secret that makes me hard to let go of the life here, in Copenhagen.

Laziness

November 12, 2009

After coming to Denmark, I found out that human has unlimited possibility.



And also unlimited laziness.



Laziness is the malignant gene inside human body, which stops one’s potential from realizing. Can’t be totally rooted out from one individual I think. It has already, firmly stuck to the poisonous nature of human being. No matter how thoroughly we try to eliminate it, still, residue exists. But it doesn’t mean that we can just let laziness dominates ourselves……laziness would not led you to a miserable life, I would say, but a featureless life. So featureless that sometimes even is considered sad. The gifted one wouldn’t become successful writer if he didn’t write down thoughts when inspiration comes; talented one wouldn’t become real artist if he lacked of practice. Featureless life wouldn’t be so miserable, but not so good, either…… a little bit like souls mentioned in Divine Comedy—those who suspended on Limbo—“this blind life of theirs is so debased; they envious are every other fate.”



Don’t want my life being like this. Thus I should do my best to restrain laziness inside me. I wouldn’t like to say this, but Copenhagen is just like a paradise designed for escaping from reality, at least for exchange student like me. In this kind of environment, it’s hard to force myself to face the future of business students, which is so competitive. Not just hard; it’s VERY HARD. I can find any kind of excuse for my escape. Like blue mood caused by miserable weather or endless dark night, which could be dispelled by beers or parties. Everything lures me to escape. However, once submit myself to laziness, everything’s over. The opportunities for realizing ability will disappear; po po po, like bubbles burst.



But I won’t make this happen. I will catch opportunities. Beers and parties are for celebrating and dissolving stress, not escaping reality. Should recognize the difference carefully.

Languages and Signs

Reading foreign languages is just like decoding a series of signs. In other words, we are reading signs, not language. One by one, each sign enters our brains and transfers to different meanings, and the speed of which depends on how frequently we practiced before.

This is the point of view brought up by Murakami Haruki, during his talk with Murakami Ryu. He said that, if you write articles with “signs”, instead of your native language, then the feeling of disbelief while writing will disappear automatically. Thus, his first novel Hear the Wind Sing was first written in English, and then being translated to Japanese.

“In this way, that’ll no longer be language anymore.”

Crazy Factors

Oct. 10th, 2009 at 12:26 PM

It’s so easy for me to be affected by others’ opinions…others’ thoughts…isn’t it?



My thoughts are hidden behind lots of things like self-esteem, common sense, or conventions, etc. Is it a good thing or not, hiding my real thoughts like this? I’m sure I’ll have to sacrifice many things to exchange the life that I can live out my own thoughts. And I know I’m not brave enough to sacrifice such much.



Everyone has his own crazy dream in his mind, like climbing up to the highest mountain and flying down in a glider. Or leave everything behind and go abroad to part work, part study, experiencing life full of difficulties. The crazy dream of mine may be the latter. I also think of quitting what I’m learning now and start to study English literature or arts; that can be another crazy dream of mine.



If I could put all these things into practice, how cool it would be!

Oct. 5th, 2009

Oct. 5th, 2009

Maybe the thing I miss the most is my native language as well……but how I wish I could speak English as good as you. So enjoy the time being with you guys. If I can express myself more efficiently, then the time will be even better. And you’ll know who I really am. So many opinions I swallowed back just because of language.



And that’s why I tried my best to improve my speaking skill. As time goes by, I can feel the barrier is dissolving gradually…but not fast enough. I always have a feeling that the day that the language barrier finally disappears, will also be the day we have to say goodbye…



Maybe that’s the way life goes. Challenges after challenges, train us to be stronger and equipped with more abilities to survive. In the progress you should endure some pain. Endure the twinge of regret. Endure the mood of melancholy, sometimes…



If only we could read minds. But that’s a passive way of thinking. I believe I can speak English very fluently someday in the future, and I won’t let language stop me from getting what I want again.

Travel

Sep. 23rd, 2009 at 10:02 PM

I can’t feel the urge to plan more trips other than the trips to Germany, Czech and Italy. I don’t like to travel in a rush, like I have to accomplish a mission called”run around Europe in one semester!” Only those cities that I really want to visit will motivate me to plan the trip to there.



I have a strong feeling that this won’t be my last time to be in Europe. And that’s one of the many reasons that I don’t want to visit so many cities here this time. Take picture with each spot, and then leave for the other city—that sucks. Not the right way to travel. The real travel for me, is to stay in a city as long as I want, inhaling and tasting the air there, writing journals to record the life and atmosphere and people there. Try to experience life, and do my best to understand that city. That’s travel. You won’t forget the people and the feeling in that city, even many years have passed.

Here in Copenhagen

Aug. 29th, 2009 at 11:00 PM

The weather is quite nice in Copenhagen these days.



Most of the time, we bathed in sunshine during daytime. Even though it’s windy, I can feel some heat in the air. You can see Danish smiling, pushing the huge, luxury baby carriages everywhere. The atmosphere is leisurely and unhurried, from Monday to Friday, weekend, everyday……people walk on the street with satisfying smile, just like they’re enjoying their vacations.



My school is about fifteen minutes’ walk from my dorm. The distance is just right. On the way I’ll pass by two cheap markets called fakta and Netto(when I say cheap, I mean it’s just a little more expensive than the stuff in Taiwan; the price level here is 5 times the one in Taiwan.) so it’s convenient for me to supplement my food and some daily commodities. I’ve been here for two weeks, and meals are different from time to time. When I was alone in my dorm, it’s always toast, cheese, coffee and water. And that’s all. Just need to stuff my stomach anyway. It’s easy and fast when you have full schedule, just like these two weeks. When it comes to some activities, there may be some changes of my menu: pizza, hotdog, pizza, hotdog……these two take place by turns. I think they’re the two cheapest meals you can buy here.



And beer. I, or students in Taiwan, seldom drink beer. Why would you want to drink something that tasted so strange? But, after coming here, it seems like everybody love it so much and drink it like drinking water. I was so strongly curious. And that’s why I step in the world of beer. The beer pool.



Most of my dorm mates are Europeans or Americans. Our yard is very busy these days. It seems everybody will gather to the long picnic table in the yard and enjoy beers once they’re free. Not only guys but girls! During the first week (the week I took crash course), there’re only two Asians in my dorm- one Korean girl and me. (Two Singapore girls moved in the next week) Most of the time, the Korean girl just stayed in her room, so I don’t know much about her. The voices in the yard were so loud at night that sometimes I couldn’t do anything including sleeping, so I could not but join my half-drunk dorm mates. Sit, and there would be beer in front of you. And then it’s chatting and drinking. After few days, I got familiar with the faces in our dorm, and met many friends from different countries. I also found that Carlsberg beer is not as bitter as Taiwan beer. It’s really good when it’s cold and fresh.



There are pros and cons about beer. Good things are it makes you more relax and easy to know friends. Bad things—when you drink too much, that will definitely burn a hole in your wallet, and it’s not so healthy. I went to too many parties last week and didn’t get enough rest; plus, drink too much at night; so I’m sick now. It’s still busy outside my window, it seems like everyone has his lunch outside in the yard. I really want to join them but my voice is awful. I’m afraid there won’t be anyone who can understand what I’m saying.



Party. I think everyone has his limit about this thing. I think two parties a week is my limit. But…when it comes to my dorm mates, well, at least most of them, party everyday is normal. Dance all night, no problems. Maybe it is the so called “culture gap”. It’s hard to imagine that club being students’ important gathering place in Taiwan,



Yeah, it’s really hard to imagine.