I have new friends that speak German. Yeah! On Tuesday and Thursday afternoons after German I was able to visit with some of the ladies in the ward. It is so nice to have people speak nice slow High German with me that can switch over to English when my brain starts to melt away. Last night Elisa said in her sleep, “It’s so hard to learn when people aren’t speaking it around you all the time. It’s like the words just don’t come very easily, you know?” She was very animated except her eyes were closed.
These next few weeks of German are going to be a real challenge. I catch onto the grammar pretty quickly but since I still think too fast in English nothing seems to come out quite right. A new course also means new people and it will be an adjustment working with some of the new people in our class.
Yesterday we enjoyed a nice relaxing Saturday. The weather was so beautiful. We went to a fair in a neighboring town. In the little narrow streets they had rides and food stands and a really fun game for kids put on by the fire department. The kids had to stack plastic apple crates one on top of another, to see who could get the highest. They were roped up and had a fireman belaying them. Some of the kids were perched up on top of a 30-foot tower before the crates fell out from under them. We went with the Mascaros. It is so much fun watching kids experience new things and be so excited about life.
Elisa got to be a hero this week. (That gets a song stuck in our heads every time one of us says it.) I was just waiting for the train and then I turned around and a bunch of people were gathered around a man who had fallen flat on his face and was having a seizure. I could not believe that no one was doing anything! They just stared at him blankly–and I certainly didn’t want to turn him over and take the lead when I can barely speak the language. Plus I don’t know the customs here. In the US it’s practically discouraged to do any sort of first aid if you do not want to get yourself into a lot of trouble. Well anyway, I finally asked if anyone spoke English. By then the poor guy’s seizure had stopped and he said, “I do.” So I told him I was going to treat him for shock. I asked him questions about his condition and basically let him tell me what to do to help him. It was certainly out of the ordinary, but everything turned out okay.
We had a very normal, insignificant week. The only highlights are going to sound like reruns of old Chad and Elisa episodes. We played games with Tony and Rachel. We went to a wedding reception on Friday night, and believe it or not Mormons actually dance at receptions in Switzerland. We got to sit in on a mission lesson for a Portuguese speaker. We did a bunch of stuff around the house and went for a nice walk around the beautiful neighborhoods. And we discovered that the Green Lantern super hero is pretty lame.
Some noteworthy completions occurred this week. I finished my third month of German classes, unfortunately I have also decided to torture myself for the next four weeks as well. Chad has been working on a finance program for the last year +. He was able to run stock info through the program and it suggested the best financial track for our savings. So, by the way, we also spent all our savings this week to buy little pieces of paper that may or may not be worth anything in the future. Let’s hope Chad’s program is a winner!
The only other exciting thing that comes to mind is Chad and I have learned enough German to create a seemingly harmless German sentence that sounds like profanity in English. I still can not say some words in German without flushing a bit.
We had the new missionary couple over for dinner on Monday. Tuesday and Wednesday Chad worked pretty late, so I slaved away on my Independent Study class. My brain is pretty fried. We do not remember Thursday so maybe we partied hard that night. 🙂 On Friday we hung out with our buddies, Tony and Rachel. By that I mean, I was using their iron to finish curtains, and everybody was kind of doing their own thing. They have become like family–we just do nothing with each other for the sake of company. We had plans to take a day trip on Saturday–but we spent the day doing a lot of little jobs and errands that have been backing up. WOOHOO!It was nice to talk to family on Sunday. We felt kind of obligated since it was Mother’s day. 😉 It was my brother Jeff’s birthday–he has officially reached the late 20’s and it was fun to tease him. Primary was a little terrifying. My pianist wasn’t there and we were starting to learn a new song. Then the sister who was supposed to hang around to help translate suddenly left the room. I tried not to show the little kids how panicked I was! Elisa is laughing now but she wasn’t on Sunday. I hope I never have to do that again.
Chad has been waiting to get a haircut for a LOOOOONG time. I really like when his hair grows out. It gets all cute and curly. He finally got one this week. I was shocked when he came back with such short hair. I thought we had gone over the haircutting vocabulary enough. Kurz und Lang. I wasn’t even positive I was ordering a haircut. He had quite an interesting time. In the middle of the haircut the lady left a few locks kind of long. I guess she thought that my cowlicks would make it stick up if she didn’t. But I don’t know any of those words in German, so she just grabbed a lock of hair in her fingers and stood it straight up and said, “BING!”
With all of my emotional waterworks I was inspired to ask Chad about crying. Apparently only fiction makes him cry. The only time I think I have seen him cry was at Wicked. His long list of highly emotional moments include, the first act finale in Wicked, Les Mis and Of Mice and Men, oh yeah and Mr. Holland’s Opus (but thats embarrassing). I figured bringing the subject up would make him more secure with his emotions. He now tells me every time he cries invisible air bubbles. He has explained that he is always just SO emotional but his tears don’t work like mine.
Well besides conversations between Chad and I that probably do not make any sense to anyone else, we haven’t been doing too much worth noting. It will be nice to include some of the family in our bizarre conversations when we visit the States in July.
