Good Times & “Hargašame Wecere Alin”
This past month has been definitely one of the most challenging for me. I don’t think I have ever been so busy, with a full course load, a part time internship, and a school job on top of that. The first three weeks of school I was really struggling to strike a balance between the three of them while also trying to make time for friends and romance. So I guess I am a bit proud to say that after an entire month of working in overdrive, I think I have finally got a handle on this new lifestyle. This week was the first week where I really felt like I was on top of everything: my courses are going well, I love my internship, and I have some great ideas for some upcoming school programs. Relationship-wise, things have been blossoming as well. Via my school job, I’ve been given the rare opportunity to interact with people I normally might not have, and I have personally really benefited from it. I’ve also been in a much better place emotionally after an overdue conversation with grabban. (Interkulturelle forhold er ikke bare bare…)
Some big news I might not have mentioned before: if everything goes according to plan, I will be spending two weeks in China this winter! (The plane tickets have already been bought, now all that’s missing is the VISA. It’s strange that I have to apply for a VISA to visit a country I was born in and lived the first part of my life in.) I think the last time I went back to China was 2005, so it’s really been a while. I am looking forward to seeing my grandparents, enjoying my aunt’s cooking, playing mahjong, eating sugar popsicles, playing badminton, and experiencing winter in China for the first time since 1995! There might also be a trip to Harbin to see the winter lights in the works. As well as a possible trip to Henan to visit my friend Yanzi, who I met in Norway.
While we’re on that subject, my mom showed me this song a while back: it is sung partly in Mandarin, partly in Manchu, the former language of my people, the Manchus. Due to a long process of sinicization, today there is only a handful of elderly folks who still speak the language, and everybody speaks Mandarin. Personally, I feel a real sadness that this is a language which will probably die out within a couple of decades. In another reality, I might have spoken it fluently. I don’t understand a thing, but at the same time, it evokes a certain nostalgia within me: it’s one of the few things that I have to connect with a culture and a heritage which is now all but lost. I also think it’s a very pretty language. (Manchu’s got rolling r’s, which is pretty awesome.)
I think I’ll stop here and let you enjoy the music. This past weekend I was at the Matterhorn with my friend Emma; we took a lot of photos so expect those soon. Natta!
