Lost in Translation

I still haven’t figured out if this is a good or bad thing yet, but because of the language barrier, I can never seem to keep up with the conversation, usually resulting in me not knowing what we’re going to do for the day until we are actually doing it.

For example:  Last Friday I went with my host sisters to their diving practice, expecting to swim laps/watch them dive, but I ended up instead joining right in with them as the instructor very politely tried to show me what to do, even though I understood about 5% of what he was actually saying. Fun, no? Well I actually really did enjoy it, and I’m going to join in with my host sisters and practice twice a week. It ended up that Zoe forgot to tell her coach that I was American, and didn’t understand most diving terms until the end of the first practice, so I must’ve seemed pretty slow… whoops!

Also one morning last week, after eating breakfast, my host mom told me to pack a bag, and we were going canoeing for the day with the girl’s swim team. No problem! It ended up being pretty fun, except I felt petty bad that I couldn’t understand any of the directions being given. But we made it, and then we went rock climbing after a few hours on the water, and had an enjoyable picnic in a park, munchin on fresh picked apples off of the trees.

The next day we went into town, shopping around and walking through the fresh foods market set up in the streets weekly, and stopped at an outdoor café for cappachinos/hot coco/tea. It was my picture-perfect European moment, watching the locals walk through the cobblestone streets while we sat relaxing and conversing. It was pretty surreal, thinking of what I would be doing if I were back home. (Which would be just getting up and ready for school, ick!)

Last weekend we hosted a grill-out in our cute little backyard/garden, which if I heard right, my 18 year old host brother completely remade earlier in the summer. It was really fun, and lots of the neighbours came out to eat delicious German potato salad, brats, and loads of bread.  After it got dark out, Zoe and I joined in with the younger kids to play on the trampoline and numerous rounds of Königfrei, or as I understood it, manhunt.

We also had a bonfire, and did something that I found very strange: Instead of roasting marshmallows and making s’mores, we put a sort of pizza-dough on sticks, and roasted them til they tasted like freshly baked pizza dough, mmmm. I’m tellin you, these Germans sure know how to do bread right! (I’ve got to stay really careful around all these delicious foods!)

At the moment I am reading none other than The Magic Tree House series, (for 1st-2nd graders) but auf Deutsch, Das Magische Baumhaus, of course. I find it pretty crazy that I actually read what I’m reading now 10 years ago, but this time in another language. And the reason for such a silly choice in books, is that I can understand it! Probably not the typical choice in reading for someone in High School, though. I just find it crazy, that the same book in English is probably sitting either on my or my sisters bookshelf at home. Weird. Film-wise, every night at 20.15 (8:15 p.m.) there is the prime-time feature on TV, and we’ve been watching an assortment of shows, German produced, and American, with voices dubbed over. My two most memorable include Friendship!, about two Germans from former East Germany travel across America; very humourous; and Lost in Translation with Bill Murray and Scarlett Johannson, which I found incredibly relatable. (As I watched it in German with Japanese and actually didn’t understand much of it at all, so maybe I’m completely off.)

My first official day of German school was Monday, and everything went well! I’m starting a new post now, or more likely after I translate all of my homework…

Oh! Other exciting news: During our fall break over here we will be heading up to Berlin! Woot woot!!