My Own Recording Studio

What do you call it when a bunch of politicians just talk and talk and talk to avoid making any decision? I forgot. Anyway, I don't know how they do it. You wouldn't think that talking for two hours makes your throat hurt, but it does. Through my work, my name was given to another language project. They are making a program that talks in English and asks for responses to test the student's ability, so they needed a native speaker to record everything for them. I never want to hear my voice on this program (I hate my own voice, and maybe they do too but they felt too embarrassed to turn back and decided they'd just delete it all after I left), but it was cool to sit in this little specially-built room and look out the window to see when I had a thumbs-up.

During the sections for the beginners, I had to talk very slowly, but the rest was pretty normal. I discovered all sorts of things during those two hours. For example, the tone used during just one word can really affect the applied value. Everything I read talked about issues in the world, stated both sides, and then asked for the student's opinion. I totally inserted my opinion into several of the issues. (Whoops.) Take, for example, the body piercing and tattoo section. I could have said it like it was an exciting subject, but I said it like it was a difficult and taboo subject. I also noticed that it was I was overly aware of my breathing (everything was so loud in there), so during each break I tried to catch my breath a little.

When they said that a guy had gone to buy me a bottle of water, my worries were confirmed when he brought water with Kohlensäure, or . . . oh man, another English word I've forgotten. The fizzy stuff in pop, oh yeah, carbonation. Not only do I not like how tastes, how did they expect me to keep reading while burping? I retrieved my own bottle of water after the first few sips.

The girl who was doing the recording was so cool. She is French and has two siblings. We talked about how our mothers stayed home for us and that was nice, but we weren't sure we could do that. She told me afterwards that she was so surprised because I rarely made mistakes and I didn't make a lot of mouth noises like other people did, so she wouldn't have to edit them all out. I even discovered some problems with the written script and corrected them.

Even though my throat hurts now, I would do it again if they asked.