Lol, I've had this writing page open since Friday without typing anything into it. There's just so much to say. So right this instant I figured out how I should layout this entry and will go forth and do so now.
Sometimes I like to think of putting the past behind me. And yes, it is an available temptation; if things are so good now, why even bother thinking of the past? Letting go is so liberating. Keeping this in mind, it is pretty interesting that "your past" would be a part of the gratitude challenge. However, I wholly agree with it, and not so much with the counterargument about letting the past go that I've just presented. After all, without being grateful for the past, one cannot fully appreciate the present.
I think about this a lot.
My life seems to be a series of fateful coincidences, and compared to how often I hear about other people's little serendipitous incidents, I seem to have an uncanny amount occur. Perhaps it's just because I have an appreciation for the little things that seem to transcend time and distance and make me smile. I don't want to think I'm that much of a special person and am living some kind of extraordinary life; I just want to think that I'm making the most out of it for my own self.
Anyway, there were a few incidents in very recent memory that exhibit this awareness of the past in my delighting in the present. Here are two of them just from this weekend.
• I went to a Thalia bookstore in Landstraße that had a Coffee Fellows franchise in it with the intent of doing some work there. I first discovered this coffee chain in the main train station in Dresden on the way back to Vienna, saw that they had iced coffee, and placed it in my head for future reference. However, the café never opened, even if it said it would be open at 9 am (it was almost 11 when I arrived). I waited a bit and roamed around the bookstore, hoping it would open eventually. My wandering brought me to the foreign languages section (which I somehow always end up in anyway). Though of course, here, English was a foreign language, and German was the language of reference. I looked at the books in the Spanish section and saw a shelf full of books in both German and Spanish. There was one that was a collection of myths from around Latin America. One the left, the text was in Spanish, and on the right, its translated equivalent was in German.
It was perfect. I had to buy it.
What better way for me to keep up in both of these languages and try to catch the nuances between the two translations? (That's so much fun to do. In doing that I see the appeal in comparative literature, but I now know that I could never seriously do it as my field of study.)
Today, as I was beginning to read the book in both languages at once–I have a method for it–I casually flipped through some of the first pages, where it lists copyright and author information. And as it turns out, the person who collected the myths was born in Bolivia but is now an author who resides in Germany, and the one who translated them was a German born in Berlin. Both those places mentioned just happen to be quite dear to me. If it were possible, that somehow made me love that little book even more.
• On Friday, our group was assigned with cooking an "Austrian" meal and inviting two guests off of the streets to join us. (We live near the technical university, so it's a pretty student-y quarter.) The latter task seemed kind of bizarre and a chore to have to accomplish. I got paired with another friend from the group, Cooper, who is also quite outgoing and the other person most likely to approach random people on the street to ask them to lunch (I like to think it's something I'm capable of doing). I was a bit nervous at first, but I knew that if I undertook it, at worst people would say no and we just wouldn't have any guests, but at best I'd have a really, really cool story to tell.
Obviously, the fact that I'm writing about it in my blog means that the best case scenario happened.
Cooper and I left the apartment and set off on the street. We both decided we would actually follow through and try to ask people, and gave us some guidelines to follow so as to avoid embarrassment and hostility.
a) we wouldn't ask people who were walking, since they would probably be going somewhere
b) we would only ask people who were standing there having a smoke or otherwise relaxing
c) we would only ask people who were in pairs, because it'd be awkward having a person say yes and then follow us around trying to find another person
d) we'd try and find some young people
That being said, we were kind of reluctant. Even as we entered the park and saw some girls sitting on benches, we passed by them and told ourselves we would scour the area and decide who to ask first. But then by the fountain, we saw two chill-looking guys around our age and decided to quit dilly dallying and just ask them. I charged myself with introducing ourselves and opening the floor to conversation, and Cooper joined in. Basically we told them we're here studying German and asked them if they'd like to try our attempt at Austrian cooking, inviting them to lunch.
They replied, "Sure! We haven't eaten yet, anyway, and we're quite hungry."
Cooper and I couldn't believe it. We got really excited and made sure our guests knew how much we appreciated their answer. However, contrary to what the task originally called for, it turned out they weren't native Austrians, but were international students studying at the technical university. (OF COURSE they were international students. I'm just naturally drawn to them.)
So we had fun breaking the ice trying to guess where we were all from (all in German). One boy was from Iran, and the second didn't make it clear right away. He gave us some clues: Eastern Europe, communism, really close to Austria. My first guess was Poland–wrong. My second guess, obviously going in the order of countries I'm affiliated with–Romania. The boy said, "Exactly!" and I got even more excited. I said, "I was just there a month ago!" Life is funny.
What's more, the Romanian accurately guessed I was Filipino. I was actually quite shocked, since earlier that same day a Japanese man in the elevator asked me if I was from Hong Kong or something like that. (Usually people take me for some kind of East Asian first.) I asked how he knew, and he said that he had some Filipino friends from school so he might have guessed. Huh. So yeah, taking all that into account, we instantly became friends.
The guests enjoyed the hearty lunch my group had prepared, and it was a splendid time all throughout. And yep, it ended up being a good story to tell. So next time, when I mention having an Iranian or Romanian friend who studies in Vienna, and people ask how I met them, I'll start it with, "Well it's a funny story..."
It seems like the more I travel, the more these things seem to happen. If coming across a German/Spanish book on Latin American myths and meeting an Iranian and Romanian at the same time happened to high school me, I would really have thought nothing of it besides, "Wow, it's cool to get a glimpse into these far off places this way!" Whereas now, these examples were particularly meaningful thanks to places I had been in the past, and people I've met through languages I've learned. I guess that really proves the infinite potential for connections to be made between people of the world, as long as they care enough about them to maintain them as life goes along.
Anyway, considering this is a gratitude challenge (that somehow just turned into a normal blog entry), I'll end making a brief note of how grateful I am for everything that has happened to me, especially what I've chosen to remember and keep close to my heart. It is these memories and personality developments that continue helping me appreciate every moment, as I go forth with each day and make more new memories.
Sometimes I like to think of putting the past behind me. And yes, it is an available temptation; if things are so good now, why even bother thinking of the past? Letting go is so liberating. Keeping this in mind, it is pretty interesting that "your past" would be a part of the gratitude challenge. However, I wholly agree with it, and not so much with the counterargument about letting the past go that I've just presented. After all, without being grateful for the past, one cannot fully appreciate the present.
I think about this a lot.
My life seems to be a series of fateful coincidences, and compared to how often I hear about other people's little serendipitous incidents, I seem to have an uncanny amount occur. Perhaps it's just because I have an appreciation for the little things that seem to transcend time and distance and make me smile. I don't want to think I'm that much of a special person and am living some kind of extraordinary life; I just want to think that I'm making the most out of it for my own self.
Anyway, there were a few incidents in very recent memory that exhibit this awareness of the past in my delighting in the present. Here are two of them just from this weekend.
• I went to a Thalia bookstore in Landstraße that had a Coffee Fellows franchise in it with the intent of doing some work there. I first discovered this coffee chain in the main train station in Dresden on the way back to Vienna, saw that they had iced coffee, and placed it in my head for future reference. However, the café never opened, even if it said it would be open at 9 am (it was almost 11 when I arrived). I waited a bit and roamed around the bookstore, hoping it would open eventually. My wandering brought me to the foreign languages section (which I somehow always end up in anyway). Though of course, here, English was a foreign language, and German was the language of reference. I looked at the books in the Spanish section and saw a shelf full of books in both German and Spanish. There was one that was a collection of myths from around Latin America. One the left, the text was in Spanish, and on the right, its translated equivalent was in German.
It was perfect. I had to buy it.
What better way for me to keep up in both of these languages and try to catch the nuances between the two translations? (That's so much fun to do. In doing that I see the appeal in comparative literature, but I now know that I could never seriously do it as my field of study.)
Today, as I was beginning to read the book in both languages at once–I have a method for it–I casually flipped through some of the first pages, where it lists copyright and author information. And as it turns out, the person who collected the myths was born in Bolivia but is now an author who resides in Germany, and the one who translated them was a German born in Berlin. Both those places mentioned just happen to be quite dear to me. If it were possible, that somehow made me love that little book even more.
• On Friday, our group was assigned with cooking an "Austrian" meal and inviting two guests off of the streets to join us. (We live near the technical university, so it's a pretty student-y quarter.) The latter task seemed kind of bizarre and a chore to have to accomplish. I got paired with another friend from the group, Cooper, who is also quite outgoing and the other person most likely to approach random people on the street to ask them to lunch (I like to think it's something I'm capable of doing). I was a bit nervous at first, but I knew that if I undertook it, at worst people would say no and we just wouldn't have any guests, but at best I'd have a really, really cool story to tell.
Obviously, the fact that I'm writing about it in my blog means that the best case scenario happened.
Cooper and I left the apartment and set off on the street. We both decided we would actually follow through and try to ask people, and gave us some guidelines to follow so as to avoid embarrassment and hostility.
a) we wouldn't ask people who were walking, since they would probably be going somewhere
b) we would only ask people who were standing there having a smoke or otherwise relaxing
c) we would only ask people who were in pairs, because it'd be awkward having a person say yes and then follow us around trying to find another person
d) we'd try and find some young people
That being said, we were kind of reluctant. Even as we entered the park and saw some girls sitting on benches, we passed by them and told ourselves we would scour the area and decide who to ask first. But then by the fountain, we saw two chill-looking guys around our age and decided to quit dilly dallying and just ask them. I charged myself with introducing ourselves and opening the floor to conversation, and Cooper joined in. Basically we told them we're here studying German and asked them if they'd like to try our attempt at Austrian cooking, inviting them to lunch.
They replied, "Sure! We haven't eaten yet, anyway, and we're quite hungry."
Cooper and I couldn't believe it. We got really excited and made sure our guests knew how much we appreciated their answer. However, contrary to what the task originally called for, it turned out they weren't native Austrians, but were international students studying at the technical university. (OF COURSE they were international students. I'm just naturally drawn to them.)
So we had fun breaking the ice trying to guess where we were all from (all in German). One boy was from Iran, and the second didn't make it clear right away. He gave us some clues: Eastern Europe, communism, really close to Austria. My first guess was Poland–wrong. My second guess, obviously going in the order of countries I'm affiliated with–Romania. The boy said, "Exactly!" and I got even more excited. I said, "I was just there a month ago!" Life is funny.
What's more, the Romanian accurately guessed I was Filipino. I was actually quite shocked, since earlier that same day a Japanese man in the elevator asked me if I was from Hong Kong or something like that. (Usually people take me for some kind of East Asian first.) I asked how he knew, and he said that he had some Filipino friends from school so he might have guessed. Huh. So yeah, taking all that into account, we instantly became friends.
The guests enjoyed the hearty lunch my group had prepared, and it was a splendid time all throughout. And yep, it ended up being a good story to tell. So next time, when I mention having an Iranian or Romanian friend who studies in Vienna, and people ask how I met them, I'll start it with, "Well it's a funny story..."
It seems like the more I travel, the more these things seem to happen. If coming across a German/Spanish book on Latin American myths and meeting an Iranian and Romanian at the same time happened to high school me, I would really have thought nothing of it besides, "Wow, it's cool to get a glimpse into these far off places this way!" Whereas now, these examples were particularly meaningful thanks to places I had been in the past, and people I've met through languages I've learned. I guess that really proves the infinite potential for connections to be made between people of the world, as long as they care enough about them to maintain them as life goes along.
Anyway, considering this is a gratitude challenge (that somehow just turned into a normal blog entry), I'll end making a brief note of how grateful I am for everything that has happened to me, especially what I've chosen to remember and keep close to my heart. It is these memories and personality developments that continue helping me appreciate every moment, as I go forth with each day and make more new memories.
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