The finer points

I started taking the introductory Dutch class at the University of Gent this last Wednesday. So far we have covered pronunciation, and some basic phrases most of us already knew such as "What is your name?" and "Where do you live?" My classmates hail from all over. Everywhere from Nigeria to Thailand, Canada to Portugal. When we were planning our trip to Belgium it seemed that spending my time with other expats would be silly. Why go all the way to Belgium to send our time with people from home? But it has been a huge comfort to me to talk to other people who live linguistically and culturally isolated. Interestingly, I'm the only one in the class that is there with someone from home. Everyone else is there, rather romantically, for love.

I suggested to one of the girls in class that she will likely be learning Dutch much faster than I, seeing as she can practice it at home with her Belgian boyfriend. She rolled her eyes and laughed. "It causes tension!" I guess he isn't always as...patient as he could be. They too have trouble finding certain foods, and struggle with being unemployed after successful professional lives in other countries. And there is only one other American there, so really I'm NOT spending time with people I could have met back in the States. Instead I get to meet adventurous people from all over the world! Neat!

Our teacher is really funny. She speaks Dutch, English, French, and knows some of the good swear words in Arabic. She has to teach Dutch in English and French at the same time, because not everyone in the class has a language in common. There is one girl there from Spain who doesn't speak either of those, so she tries to throw in a few words in Spanish if she can, although professor Ines admits that she really doesn't know much Spanish. The class takes twice as long because she has to go back and say everything again, but I don't mind because it is fun to try to understand what she says in French. In a very practical way, she is stressing the Flemish dialect pronunciation of Dutch.

In Flemish, I have learned, the "g" sound is very soft. It is almost exactly like an "h", and all of us in the class are struggling to distinguish them. They also differ from Netherlands Dutch with their v's and their w's. In the Netherlands, a "v" at the beginning of a word sounds more like an "f", and a "w" often sounds more like a "v". In Flemish, V's and W's are more like their English counterparts. Of course, when I started learning Dutch, I was learning from a girl in San Diego from the Netherlands, so now I have to unlearn a few things. I am sure that when my Dutch speaking relatives hear my careful Flemish pronunciation they will think, "Gee, her Dutch really isn't that good!" But if I don't learn the local dialect, I never will understand what anyone is saying, so what can you do.

On another subject, I had to go out and buy new shoes this week. When I lived in San Diego I wore sandals or flip flops when ever I wasn't at work. Since I've been here, I've been wearing boots more suited to the cold weather that apparently didn't fit me very well. I never really noticed, because I didn't wear them very often. For the past few months I was noticing my left foot hurting, and some reading online suggested that sometimes your left foot is bigger than your right, if you are right handed...and that my shoes were causing my problem. No problem. I'll just go out and get new shoes! In the land of sexy boots, this could even be fun, right? I looked up what my shoe size would be here in Europe, and went out to remedy the problem.

In the US I am usually a little bit discriminated against, shoe-wise. I have freakishly large size ten feet, which are very wide through the toe box. Most stores don't order a lot of shoes in that size for women, so they quickly sell out of any cute shoes. With fear in my heart and my foot hurting, I walked around to shoe store after shoe store. No matter what shoes I looked at, they never had it in my size. I realized after a few hours that it is because they only stock shoes up to size 41 for women here, and depending on the brand and that type of shoe, I can wear up to a 42. That's also leaving a little bit of room for thick socks, but still, it's supposed to snow on Monday, so it would seem unwise not to leave room for some decent socks! In the end I had to buy a pair of Men's sneakers. Since then, my foot has been feeling a lot better, but it's sort of sad. No sexy European boots for me.