Christmas Sanity.

Christmas tend to be rather hectic with lots of running around, multiple shopping trips, floors covered with tape and wrapping paper, last minute cleaning and baking frenzy.

This year, again, I'm trying to retain some more sanity than before. Since Christmas Eve is on Wednesday and not on Tuesday as I've thought I have one extra day to sort everything out, which is a relief. Even buying presents is surprisingly easy this year, despite my mid-December panic.

Usually Christmas is very stressful and quite frankly I tend to be glad that Christmas is over. This year I just would like to have Christmas that are enjoyable, when I make most of this time, despite the fact that I'm not particularly keen on family gatherings. I refuse to be whipped into this frenzy. At the end of the day it's not a clean house or a stack of presents under the Christmas tree or the tree itself that makes Christmas special.

Home.

Finally, I'm back home for Christmas. It's good to be back, although hearing only Polish around is still a bit of a shock and I need to stop myself speaking English to my parents. But I'll get used to it in a few days, hopefully.

This is the first Christmas break in years when I don't need to revise or anything, so today was a bit of a long day with not much to do. Since I don't rest by doing absolutely nothing, I feel rather tired already. This is a novel situation for me and I clearly need to learn how to deal with time off. In search for some meaningful occupation for the next two weeks I might go crazy baking to indulge my family and finally finish reading Anna Karenina. Or maybe embark on a few arts and crafts projects. Of course, I still have some vac scheme applications to deal with, so these will be attended to shortly.

In the mean time, I'll carry on drinking tea and eating homemade pączki. 

"The Wave"

While I was away from the blog, our play had a premiere in Leiden. It's been extremely stressful, especially on Monday when we had no time for a dressed rehearsal, because the technical one took 4 hours. In any case, the show was a success. I felt so proud of the cast, because they've come a very long way since we've started rehearsals in October. Yes, I'm really happy now that all this work has paid off and that we have produced something great. Here are some pictures from the performance:

 

 

A little bit of anthropology.

It's interesting how the way people use language shows their attitudes to others. I came across a phrase 'going Dutch' (on this see below) before I came to Netherlands and since then read a bit around the topics, making some interesting findings.

In Paxman's book to which I referred in one of the earlier posts, he talks about the animosity between the English and the French reflected in the phrases used by the two nations. So for instance the English would use a term 'French kiss' to describe, objectively, bizarre (though undoubtedly pleasurable) practice of sticking one' tongue to another person's mouth. Or 'French disease' to refer to syphilis. Obscene drawings were called 'French postcards', whereas prostitutes were referred to as 'French Consular Guard'. Not to forget excusing swearing by  saying 'pardon my French'.  The French, however, didn't fail to counter this with expressions such as le vice anglais (flagellation), avoir les anglais (menstruation), filer à l'anglaise (equivalent for 'taking French leave') and damné comme un Anglais.

With regard to the Dutch, the English also devised a few phrases, dating from the time when the Dutch became England's main trading rivals. There's 'Dutch courage' that I've just learnt, meaning getting courage from intoxication with alcohol. And of course 'double Dutch' as a hard to understand language, gibberish in short. There is also another one, 'going Dutch' (with variations such like 'Dutch date' and 'Dutch treat'), a practice of paying for yourself in a restaurant for instance, which probably reveals the perception of the Dutch as rather stingy people.

Language is such an interesting topic that I sometimes wish I had studied linguistics to have time to dig into it more. I remember the when I took Latin classes in high school I as really excited to find out the origin of some Polish words. And now I could learn about the sociological background of it. It's fantastic to do something else than law every now and then. For the sake of retaining sanity.

I love how I actually have time now to write posts like this, which do require some research etc.