One of life's modern pleasures, quite different from the almost immediate gratification of the internet and other entertainment forms we currently have, is waiting for the delivery of furniture to your home. I am supposed to be getting a desk in the mail -- and according to the tracking information, it should arrive "between Monday and Tuesday". Well, it's Wednesday. Someone has to be home to sign for it when it arrives, so here I am.
And as I opened the window to let some of the morning air in, even though it feels like it will be quite a warm day outside, there was that definite crispness in the air, a scent that -- well, can something smell 'cold'? I feel like that makes no sense, but it smells like cold and autumn. I suppose I'm back in a place with real seasons. I can't wait!
And yesterday, I had quite the interesting experience. I've been looking for some part-time work here in Mainz and though I have been looking primarily for math tutoring (one of my favorite things) I've also found quite a few families who would like to have English-speaking babysitters for their children. I haven't babysat (if you don't count living with the youngsters this summer or with my ((second? Once removed?)) cousins the summer before) in years, but I thought I'd give it a try. So, last night, I met two adorable youngsters - one 4, one 7 - daughters of two nice German parents in a suburb of Mainz. But here's the interesting part. I was asked not to let the children know that I spoke any German. The parents told them I would only understand English (which they have already started to learn, to various extents) -- and let me tell you, it was an interesting experience.
First of all, I watched the older girl do something pretty neat for a person new to a language. She really believed I spoke absolutely no German and knew that her sister couldn't help her if she couldn't come up with a word in English, so she had to explain what she meant when she didn't know exactly what something was called. For example, at one point, her sister was looking around desperately for (what turned out to be) her stuffed rabbit, but when the youngest one was running around and saying the words for exactly that in German, I asked the older one what she was looking for and she stood the, puzzled, and then finally said "Her going to bed teddy bear rabbit", which is a fairly fantastic description. I have a lot of respect for this particular kind of speaking, as it's something that I also have to deal with. I was having a discussion about this recently with C. The thing is, as a native English speaker, I can be incredibly, incredibly lazy. Well, I could have been so lazy as to never have learned a second language at all, but even though I have gone to the lengths to learn German, I still get to be lazy in ways people with a different first language can never be -- i.e. when I come across a word in the German sentence I want to say that I don't know how to say, I can just casually say the English word instead and most of the time, I will be understood.
I do this less than I used to (because my German has gotten better) but it still happens. In my own defense, I don't do it necessarily out of laziness -- more because I don't want to interrupt the flow of the conversation by saying 'huh' or something equally eloquent. Anyways. It's a hard thing to do and a very interesting thing to do from a learning standpoint - to be able to describe something even if you don't know how to say it exactly, and this seven-year-old was pretty damn good at it.
And the other hard part for me yesterday was when the youngest had trouble falling asleep and wanted to know when her mother would be home, and I had to speak to her in English even though I know she couldn't understand everything I said. She got a lot of it, though, and eventually, did fall asleep. But it was very hard to not just switch to German, which I am sure would have been more comforting to her.
Well, still no desk. I guess I'll keep waiting.
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