The leaves are turning.

I think they all fell on the ground at the same time. Or, at least the first wave has. The trees aren't bare yet, but all of a sudden the ones that have come down cover my shoes while I wait at the bus stop.

I'm still negotiating the transition from one academic system to another but I think the end is in sight. One more exam and if/when I pass that, I can start math again. I feel like it's been forever. My friends encourage me that I'll jump right back in and it will be okay, but the nervousness I have is the kind that doesn't go away until you actually prove it false, as nice as encouragement can be.

I got to go hang out with the girls I mentioned in the last post again this week. This time, to learn more English (specifically to practice some writing and reading) we had a very fun game. Each person wrote down the name of an animal in English (this took a considerable amount of time, especially since the youngest one doesn't even know the full alphabet yet, even with the German names for the letters, let alone the English ones). I coached the four year old, who frequently had the right idea for how a letter was shaped but didn't trust herself to get it right, so she would "write" it in the air with her hand first and run that by me before committing it to paper. After making all these flashcards, we would hold one up at a time (not looking at which one it was) and whoever was "it" had to read the word on the card and pretend to be that animal so that we could guess which one it was.

Pretending to be animals seemed to work as a good motivator for some language learning. The 7-year-old, however, is too clever and has too broad of a vocabulary for her own good - or at least for mine. She made me have to act like a snail. If anyone knows how to do that convincingly, please do tell me.