Well, what a difference a week makes.
I feel significantly better situated now, in both home and mindset, and there are a couple of things of note in particular to account for this. The first is that, having taken the hint after I decided sleeping was more valuable than attending a class at 8 AM, my professor took the initiative of changing my class for me to a level sufficiently more advanced that I might actually learn something and have a reason to get out of bed. It appears that my Portuguese at this point is at more or less the same place my French was two years ago when I studied in Annecy, functional but not completely fluid, lacking plenty of vocabulary, but with significant potential to build on itself quickly enough. The second is that my roommates all more or less speak Portuguese, three of whom are Brazilians and primarily speak it, so I have Portuguese muddling around in my brain at any given hour of the day. There is not a single day in which I spend the majority of the day speaking aloud in English. So from a linguistic vantage point, I'm more settled and, as a result, most everything else feels more settled as well.
Despite my somnolent passive-aggression, the change of the class has ended up being much for the better of things. Originally I wasn't sure whether to change the class or not, but having done so, I see that it's what should have happened in the first place. It's very much a situation of not fully realizing you needed something until you actually have it. The class is composed of ten Chinese students, me, and a couple of other people, which is not surprising to me at all, but seems very shocking to everyone else I mention it to. I have a profound respect for the Chinese students, for they are diligent, hard-working, and take the class very seriously, asking many questions and pushing themselves to learn more words and improve on mistakes pointed out to them. That said, I understand almost nothing they actually say aloud, because albeit endearing, their accents are just too far off the mark for me to comprehend. My intense curiosity about them and why on earth they chose this poor little country is tempered only by the fact that they are somewhat insular and shy to speak with people who are not also Chinese. Perhaps we'll get there later.
As I pointed out in my last post, I am not magically speaking completely coherently or fluidly yet. I don't have some sort of switch that I can turn on and not have pauses where I'm trying to remember what I was trying to say or how I would write that, nor do I have all of the vocabulary that I understand spoken from others at the ready for when I'm saying things myself. It's just that this time I'm more focused on trying to do so.
I feel significantly better situated now, in both home and mindset, and there are a couple of things of note in particular to account for this. The first is that, having taken the hint after I decided sleeping was more valuable than attending a class at 8 AM, my professor took the initiative of changing my class for me to a level sufficiently more advanced that I might actually learn something and have a reason to get out of bed. It appears that my Portuguese at this point is at more or less the same place my French was two years ago when I studied in Annecy, functional but not completely fluid, lacking plenty of vocabulary, but with significant potential to build on itself quickly enough. The second is that my roommates all more or less speak Portuguese, three of whom are Brazilians and primarily speak it, so I have Portuguese muddling around in my brain at any given hour of the day. There is not a single day in which I spend the majority of the day speaking aloud in English. So from a linguistic vantage point, I'm more settled and, as a result, most everything else feels more settled as well.
Despite my somnolent passive-aggression, the change of the class has ended up being much for the better of things. Originally I wasn't sure whether to change the class or not, but having done so, I see that it's what should have happened in the first place. It's very much a situation of not fully realizing you needed something until you actually have it. The class is composed of ten Chinese students, me, and a couple of other people, which is not surprising to me at all, but seems very shocking to everyone else I mention it to. I have a profound respect for the Chinese students, for they are diligent, hard-working, and take the class very seriously, asking many questions and pushing themselves to learn more words and improve on mistakes pointed out to them. That said, I understand almost nothing they actually say aloud, because albeit endearing, their accents are just too far off the mark for me to comprehend. My intense curiosity about them and why on earth they chose this poor little country is tempered only by the fact that they are somewhat insular and shy to speak with people who are not also Chinese. Perhaps we'll get there later.
As I pointed out in my last post, I am not magically speaking completely coherently or fluidly yet. I don't have some sort of switch that I can turn on and not have pauses where I'm trying to remember what I was trying to say or how I would write that, nor do I have all of the vocabulary that I understand spoken from others at the ready for when I'm saying things myself. It's just that this time I'm more focused on trying to do so.