Getting into the flow

Though I have been learning Dutch for over two years, I don't yet understand half of it. I was invited to my student's wedding the other day, and attended the ceremony at a Protestant Church in Boechout near Antwerp. Belgium was originally created as a mixture of Dutch Protestants and French Catholics in a way. For this reason, even today there are many Protestants in Flanders in the northern part of Belgium. The wedding party of the musicians、 went smoothly with a series of music, a sermon, music again, then a speech about music, lead by the emcee. We ended up singing a few sacred songs with a folkloric flavor time and again during the hour and a half. It was good to utter sound. Then, they talked about how each one thought about the other in their own words. The bride made her speech steadily, took an oath and played the violin with ease. The bridegroom went into tears and couldn't stop when he was talking. The bride warmly looked at him. I thought she had grown up.

An hour and a half passed swiftly. My old student, who married two years ago at the church which belongs to the same sect of this church, held her big stomach which seemed about to burst, as she was nine months pregnant. But, she looked cheerful and happy.

Well, all this was fine, but Dutch was so difficult. Understanding half? No. I could only catch some vaguely familiar words, but never comprehend what they meant. How unpleasant it was!
From next April, the method of the examination for foreigners will be changed a great deal. It was announced just after I applied for the exam this time. In June, I was informed that the professors of universities and colleges were to be exempted from the language exam.

Oh dear! For this exam, I tried hard even though I was over 50, and I also somewhat enjoyed it.
But now, I lost my goal, though I thought I would try hard this summer.

However, it was not the first something like this happend. Things always change like this in this country.

The systems in Belgium are awfully complicated. People try to shift their responsibilities in the dual language system. The wall of the grand hall of the conservatoire has not been repainted for over thirty years. The teaching policy of the conservatoire is expected to change according to the unification of Europe.
They change the content of the examination bit by bit every year, and add interviews to the graduate examinations of the masters course, in an effort to make the organization closer to the concept of a general university. To manage a university seems to require tremendous effort. I try to keep a distance from management, so that I can concentrate on teaching the violin. In addition, Flemish people are good at English and French, and I tend to take advantage of it. I am getting into the flow, and find myself having very little knowledge about the language.

Getting into the flow is also being swept along. However, it is tiring to go against the flow. I might like to think that I am doing this in order to concentrate on the violin while keeping my physical and mental strength, but in reality it could well be that I don't do anything unless I have to.
Somehow, I have been getting used to being in unclear situations. I don't know whether it is good or bad.

While I was thinking of these things, I learned that my student gave birth. The director of the conservatoire told me that he would hope that I took the language examination, though it was not an obligation anymore, because he would like me to understand the deliberation. The deliberation is an occasion where all the teaching staff discuss and decide each student's scores, promotion, and graduation by examining all the data on a screen. It is far heavier than sitting at a wedding. The hurdle has become even higher.

I wonder if I will be better in understanding the language by this time of next year.