Fruity similies

I was talking to one of my students yesterday (this was at another abortive meeting of the English discussion group I've been trying to start; she was the only one who showed up). She was telling me about the six weeks she'd spent in Montana right near the beginning of the Iraq war, and how she felt like she'd gotten to know some piece of the American character really well. She quoted what she says is a fairly common comparison between the two countries. Germans, the saying goes, are like coconuts: a hard shell, but once you get past it, they're all sweet and milky inside. Americans are like peaches: the outside is approachable and tasty, but there's a hard center, and you never exactly know when you're going to chip a tooth on it.

This comparison stuck a cord with me and some things I've been thinking about lately. A lot of my hours in the last few weeks have been rearranged or changed so that classes can take tests or do other necessary end of the semester things, so I've had more time than usual between classes to sit in the teachers' lounge and feel a bit like a piece of furniture. There are about sixty teachers at the school, and I work with five of them, and maybe talk with about five more on a more or less regular basis. The other teachers aren't unkind - they just tend to pretend I'm not there. I'd heard before I came that Germans don't really initiate conversation with foreigners - that they're nice enough once you approach them, but you have to start the conversation (see coconut analogy). Impose your presence upon them, if you will. And I have done that a few times - said something to the other teachers who sit at my table about the weather or other inanities, and that usually leads to them asking me about how I'm doing and so forth. But these teachers won't talk to me unless I start a conversation. If I don't, they tend to go back to the piece of furniture thing. And it's not much of a relationship if you're the one doing all the talking and feeling like the other person is only answering to be polite. So at a certain point I just stopped trying. The meat of the coconut may be good, but after a certain number of failed attempts to get past the shell, you may well decide that you're not all that interested in getting at it.

All this sort of hit me in the face last Thursday, when the principal of the school retired after 18 years there (I'm not sure why he retired on a Thursday in the middle of November, so don't ask). There was a whole ceremony with speeches and blah blah. I wasn't originally planning to go, simply because I feel so awkward around the rest of the staff, but one of the teachers in training convinced me. I had never really spoken to the principal after shaking his hand on my first day here, but the whole tenor of the evening, what people said and how they said it, suggested that he was really well liked and helped to build up a sense of community that they all appreciated. And as nice as it was to see how much the staff and kids liked him, it was also a reminder that I am not really a part of the community in the sense that I would like to be, and that, at the rate things are going now, I can't really look forward to being one.

I know that's a bad attitude, though, and against the whole principle of my being here (i.e., cultural exchange, trans-Atlantic good will, all that stuff). And I don't want to adopt the attitude of one of the junior Fulbrights I was talking to at the Thankgiving party a few weeks ago; when I mentioned that I didn't feel like I was getting to know very many Germans, she shrugged her shoulders and said, "Yeah, I've pretty much given up on that." So, obviously the situation calls for some picking self up, brushing self off, starting all over again. Maybe I can take advantage of the general high spirits floating around in the Christmas air to spread some Yankee good will.

So, to stretch the fruit analogy a little farther: this peach may be bruised, but don't throw her out yet.