I used to dream of being a polyglot.
I once had a Hebrew school teacher who could speak 14 languages fluently, and I wanted to be just like her. I used to think that if I lived in different locations all over the world, I could pick up as many languages as places I'd lived.
I had a list of languages I wanted to learn fluently.
Spanish, French, Hebrew, Portuguese, Japanese, Russian, Italian, Thai, Yiddish, Arabic.
I think there's a reason Danish never made the list.
I'd never even heard Danish before coming to Denmark (for a reason. No one speaks it, except for Danes), but I figured I would learn it anyway. Shoot, if I'm living somewhere for 6 months to a year, I'll certainly pick up a good amount of the native tongue...
Not.
I went to one Danish class. One, before I quit. The government offers free Danish lessons to anyone with a CPR number (registered taxpayer), which is something I fully intended to take advantage of.
It was an intense time commitment -6 hours a week plus homework -and while I'm working full time, working on my portfolio, playing music, working on my fitness (to be discussed shortly), that kind of time commitment just didn't manage to yield positive results after a close cost-benefit analysis. Cost: so much time and head-scratching devoted to learning a language that sounds a bit like vomiting, that I can't seem to pronounce (I can't even correctly pronounce the name of the street I live on) no matter how hard I try, and that no one speaks outside of this country. Benefit: Maybe maaaaaaybe learning enough to bring a few novelty phrases back home to show off with. And let's get real, I've already picked up enough novelty phrases to cross that off the to-do list. Class dropped.
And still, this morning I found myself somewhat regretting my decision to quit. I've started going to spinning classes 3 times a week, accompanied by the occasional yoga and pilates class, and I'm hopefully starting crossfit training this week. Getting back into shape (or maybe even the best shape of my life) really helps me feel alive, even when everything outside my window is dead, cold and dark. On Mondays and Wednesdays I get up at 6am to spin before work, and my productivity level nearly doubles, at least until I crash at about 2 pm.
But the problem is this...
The great thing about group training fitness classes is that an instructor shouts deeply motivating words at you to keep you going. Push! Harder! You've got this! Only one more minute! etc...
Well, a whole lotta good that does me if I don't understand a damn word of it. All of the classes are taught in Danish. Ugh! So I'm forced to rely on visual cues to know what is going on, and the occasional translation from my good friend and work-out buddy Clara (a native Dane). But she's often too out of breath (like the rest of us) to really fill me in word-for-word.
It's a fun guessing game, unless the instructor is impossible to follow, and the music played is less-than motivating.
After already waking up somewhat groggy and putting on my grumpy pants, today's instructor succeeded in motivating me only insofar as he really freaking irritated me. By the end of the class, I was pushing harder than usual, just to have an outlet to let out my frustration at the guy leading the class. He kept counting down at absurdly short intervals to... what? I kept thinking he was counting down to have us turn up our resistance every 15 seconds, only to realize that I was the only one struggling after about a minute. Oh. Clara later told me that he kept having us turn up and down the resistance.
And he just wouldn't shut up. He kept going on and on (apparently about anatomy?) and the music he chose was just awfully wrong. I've come to rely on the music to motivate me the most. I pedal in time to the music (think cycle-dancing. Oh yeah. Soon I'll start toting a stationary bike out to clubs with me), and most instructors are really good about picking tunes that are the right pace to climb to (slow) and the right pace to sprint to (fast). This guy? Consistently chose music that was good for neither. Right in the middle. Absolutely useless. I was losing it, it being my temper.
By the end of the class I would have given anything to know Danish. I silently hated every single person in that class, just for their ability to comprehend.
But then I just channeled it all and pushed myself to the point of excruciating pain, scrunched my face into what I'm sure was among the most hideous of faces I can make, and sweat out my aggression.
Thank you, Mr. Chatty-impossible-to-follow-bad-DJ-spinning-master. You really motivated me today.
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