Catching up ...
Unable to connect with the Internet again this morning. The wireless network I was tapping into has become inaccessible. Like many others on this planet, I depend on the web as my primary means of connecting with the world. I take for granted the ability to read blogs posted daily by people in Zambia, Thailand, New York and elsewhere here in Europe, and similarly I expect each morning, however early I might rise, to be able to connect and post my pleas for affirmation to the wide world.
In two hours I’ll be sitting in German class. I hope my old seatmate is back today. She was absent Friday and the lady who sat next to me is duller than dirt. We often work on new language problems in pairs and Friday was just plain painful. This woman speaks so softly I can’t hear her and she has no facial expressions so I can’t figure out what she is trying to communicate. To top it off, she doesn’t know her German half as well as my regular seatmate.
The lessons are becoming increasingly difficult for me to follow. It’s the accumulating pace that’s the problem. If you fail to grasp a rule or fully understand a word or phrase, you can get lost in a hurry. Only German is spoken in the room, with the rare English translation tossed out now and then. I do my homework, and review each day’s lessons, but I could be doing much more. This weekend for example I spent only about 90 minutes studying and the rest of the time shopping for food, cooking, playing with His Holiness and taking care of Mama, who has come down with a nasty cold.
HH and I went to church on Sunday and he heard for the first time what the inside of a real church sounds like when it is filled with booming organ music and beautiful voices. The church we have been attending back in Smallwood is not much bigger than a good-sized farm shed, with indoor-outdoor carpeting and a four-person choir accompanied on the piano by one of our neighbors, who is a charming person but a below average pianist. The church we attended yesterday dominates a square near the Neumarkt. It is a grand building and the music intensifies as it travels through the heavily scented interior airspace. As an added treat the Mass was spoken in Latin, something I haven’t heard since I was a young boy, not much older than His Holiness. Following Mass we spent an hour at the carousel in the Weinachtsmarkt. HH rode the Harley-Davidson motorcycle and sat in the spinning teacup and had an altogether grand time.
In two hours I’ll be sitting in German class. I hope my old seatmate is back today. She was absent Friday and the lady who sat next to me is duller than dirt. We often work on new language problems in pairs and Friday was just plain painful. This woman speaks so softly I can’t hear her and she has no facial expressions so I can’t figure out what she is trying to communicate. To top it off, she doesn’t know her German half as well as my regular seatmate.
The lessons are becoming increasingly difficult for me to follow. It’s the accumulating pace that’s the problem. If you fail to grasp a rule or fully understand a word or phrase, you can get lost in a hurry. Only German is spoken in the room, with the rare English translation tossed out now and then. I do my homework, and review each day’s lessons, but I could be doing much more. This weekend for example I spent only about 90 minutes studying and the rest of the time shopping for food, cooking, playing with His Holiness and taking care of Mama, who has come down with a nasty cold.
HH and I went to church on Sunday and he heard for the first time what the inside of a real church sounds like when it is filled with booming organ music and beautiful voices. The church we have been attending back in Smallwood is not much bigger than a good-sized farm shed, with indoor-outdoor carpeting and a four-person choir accompanied on the piano by one of our neighbors, who is a charming person but a below average pianist. The church we attended yesterday dominates a square near the Neumarkt. It is a grand building and the music intensifies as it travels through the heavily scented interior airspace. As an added treat the Mass was spoken in Latin, something I haven’t heard since I was a young boy, not much older than His Holiness. Following Mass we spent an hour at the carousel in the Weinachtsmarkt. HH rode the Harley-Davidson motorcycle and sat in the spinning teacup and had an altogether grand time.
posted by Berlinbound at 6:43 AM
2 Comments:
Here's to good seatmates! :)
Your post has brought me back to a certain date... the second day of my Turkish intensive course.
The day I got lost never to be found again....
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