It will just click...

Anyone who has or is learning a foreign language has heard stories about the person that picks a language up within months. Or the person that has perfected the language and has no accent. Or we sit in language class comparing our progress with every person sitting in that room. Or I've even had people tell me, one day the language just "clicks". I've heard this multiple times. One day it'll just click for you. You know what, it never just clicked. I never felt this magical click. The one click that would bring me from dazed, confused, stumbling over my words to confident, fluent, and graceful foreigner.

But you know what has happened. In three and half very long, very painful, very lonely years, I've slowly started to understand more and more every day. I started to speak. But after those first really hard years, now I'm pretty comfortable here. I don't struggle to understand anymore, speaking doesn't freak me out. In fact, none of that is really hard to do anymore.

So to those of you that have been working hard on a language for a while, and it just hasn't clicked. Here's some bad news, it might not just happen like that, but that's ok, just keep working hard at it, it will come. I promise!

Any language learning tips or experiences?

I'm not thankful

I'm not thankful that your life is a mess and mine is perfect. I'm not thankful that I have friends, and you're alone. I'm not thankful that you're passed out in the cold, drunk, and I'm warm and cozy in my house enjoying an afternoon with my husband. I'm not thankful that you spent your money on cheap wine, when it should have gone for food. It scares me to see you like this. I thought I was well acquainted with loneliness, but maybe you know it better.

You're not the first person I've seen this way. The old man at the bar that was alone with a fancy bottle of champagne . I saw him toasting to no one in particular. Or the man at the train station that was teetering dangerously close to falling onto the tracks.

I am grateful for the man who called an ambulance. I'm grateful for my husband that rushed downstairs and made sure there was help on the way. I'm grateful that for a few hours you're in a warm hospital being taken care of. But seeing you makes it harder for me to ignore the hurting and pain in this world and honestly it's hard to be grateful when I know tomorrow might be the same for you.

I guess my name is Alisha now

When I was in kid I was really shy. One time when I was 16 I took a couple classes at a college. I was really nervous about it and was glad when I met one nice lady. When I introduced myself to her I told her my name, "Alyssa." She called me Alisha for the rest of the semester. No big deal. Then she started telling everyone else in the class my name was Alisha. OK, so I'll just be Alisha for a semester. The last day of that semester. We had to do a group discussion. One person had to write down the names of all the people in the group. When I told them how to spell my name, another girl said realized that they had called me the wrong thing for 4 months. Yes, I'm that awkward. I was reminded of how awkward I was by these "Awkward Penguin" memes.

One time when I was about 14 I dropped my favorite plum lip gloss. Someone announced in front of a big group of people that it had been lost. Anyone want to claim it? No way did I want to claim that I had lost my lip gloss in front of all those people. So I didn't get my lovely lip gloss back.

That was then. I've improved so much since then...or have????

It seems that I've regressed living in another country and learning another language.

So here they are "Awkward Penguin" that I can relate to today:

There are very important words I avoid saying, because I don't want to sound so American. Like the word for five and right. I have a limited German vocabulary and I'm avoiding all words that start with the letter "r" and have an "ü"

That plan hasn't been working out so well.

My husband says I don't speak loudly enough. He thinks that's the reason people don't understand me sometimes, not my accent. I hope he's right,but on the other hand it terrifies me to think I might be yelling at people if I raise my voice.

This has happened to me a lot of times too. More so in the past.

In Germany, it's more like I don't understand what they said. Nod and smile.

Lets face it, I could be the poster child for the awkward penguin. Feel like you could relate to any of those?

Here's where the pics are from. There's tons more. http://www.quickmeme.com/Socially-Awkward-Penguin/popular/

Trashcan

On Sunday we put out our paper trashcan. The whole day we kept reminding each other to do it. I even wrote it on a post it and stuck it on the bathroom mirror. I grabbed the office trash and noticed an envelope with our names and addresses on it.

Me: You don't throw away trash with our names and addresses on it.

Z: Why not? It's sitting outside our house, so they already know where we live and our name is on the trashcan.

Me: I don't know. I'm just going to rip it up anyways.

Z: And who's going to dig through our trash?

As we wheeled it out to the curb we looked around a realized we were the only ones that remembered to put our trash out. Good for us. Oh wait, the next day was a holiday. No one was going to come on and pick it up till Tuesday. Not wanting to walk 100 feet back to the trash area, we decided to leave it there one extra day. I know shame on us.

Next day on our way out we noticed our trashcan was no where to be seen. Ok, Monday was a holiday, so yeah obviously our trash didn't get taken out, but our trashcan was missing! It took everything in me not to point out how right I was about ripping up personal info. I think I lasted about an hour before I pointed it out. Not bad, right? So I was a little freaked out over it. This is a city owned trashcan, so if it's lost not only would I have to pay for a new one, but I'd have to talk on the phone in German. On second thought, Z would have to talk on the phone in German.

Before we did any of that though, we thought we had better look around and see if anyone was just messing with us. By this time everyone else had started putting out their trashcans. So there were about 50 trashcans that all looked a like that we had to figure out if one of them was ours. Z. decided it would be best if he dressed like a homeless person while we did this. So he put on his holey jeans and t-shirt he's had since '94 and we started walking up to every trash can on our street and staring intensely at each one. "No, this one looks too dirty to be ours." or "No I think ours is smaller." Eventually we found our trashcan not too far from our house. The moral of the story is, when in Germany follow the rules, do not put your trash out a day early, or else drunk people will teach you a lesson.

And the Forschungsergebnisse of the past 3 years is:

I'm kind of trying to learn a little Italian, when I say kind of learning that means I log into a free program once every 6 months and relearn how to say basic greetings. I'm trying to learn because I know some people in Italy and I'm going there and I always think in theory it's nice when you can communicate a bit and not make your friends ask where a toilet is for you. On top of the twice a year online studying of Italian I also have a little phrase book. When I first came to Germany I had this phrase book that I really liked, so I bought another one in Italian. As I was reading through the Italian, I was struggling to say even one word. I was like, oh my gosh, this is like a foreign language or something. I know, I know, it is a foreign language, but that was the first time I realized that German isn't a foreign language anymore. That's when I started to remember what it was like when I first started to learn German. I would look at that phrase book and barely be able to get through a word. Although in my defense, German does have words that are ridiculously long and should just be a sentence. For example today I learned the word Forschungsergebnisse, which means results of research. But anyways, German is familiar, I'm actually pretty comfortable talking here and getting around is cake. But Italy is another story. I haven't dedicated time to Italian and it is in no way a familiar or comforting language. But someday, maybe, just maybe, I will learn a bit of that beautiful language.

Meeting New People...Breath...

I went to someones house for dinner yesterday. I didn't know them. They were Z's friends. I was so nervous. I didn't know what we would talk about and I suddenly forgot all of my German manners so I whipped out a German customs book and read through the short paragraph about visiting a German's house. I mean seriously you would think I haven't been in a hundred German houses. But I guess it had been awhile since I'd visited a strangers house. So we ran across the street because we forgot to buy flowers earlier, settled on some nice chocolates and waited for them to pick us up. (we don't have a car and apparently they lived pretty far away.)

So we walked in the house. I met the wife and asked in perfect German if I should take my shoes off. She said I could leave them on. I was surprised. I guess I didn't need to put on nice socks after all. Then we sat on the couch and they were chatting a bit. And they served quiche! Yum! And we played Skip-Bo and I won, cause for some reason that's the only game Z and I played together for the first 5 years of our marriage.

Oh and the advice I got from the crappy customs book told me that they would not give us a tour of their house and don't offer to help with the food. They did give us a tour of the house, so now I'm wondering maybe I should do everything opposite of what the book says.

An Excuse to Just to Be

Today I played frisbee with two teenagers from my church. It was really cloudy, the grass was way too tall and wet. It didn't take long till our feet were soaking wet. The bottom part of my jeans was really wet too. I mean honestly, it wasn't the best game of frisbee. We wanted to play ultimate frisbee, but had to settle for frisbee golf, cause there was only four of us. So after playing frisbee for an hour we sat down on a log together. We were just talking about the two weeks of camp that we had just gotten back from, about future plans the boys had. I was sitting there with soaking wet feet and I just thought for a second, "I want a picture of this moment. I want to remember this." The weather wasn't great, the game was only so so, the hour we spent together just talking was great. Sometimes I think we plan these events just so we have the excuse to be together. I think it's worth all the planning.

This post makes up for me not writing anything for the past two months. Enjoy.

I have been ignoring my blog. Why, cause I'm a busy person. And because my husband is sitting next to me clicking on stuff on reddit and saying look at this cute penguin. I swear I can barely type up a sentence. Lets see, in the past two months I've done pretty much the same stuff I do every week, except I did go back America for 2 weeks. We went to a wedding, which I missed, because my nephew wanted to show everyone that we was 2 years old and that being 2 actually is terrible. So I took him out. (hold on I'm looking at a picture of a cat playing poker.) My aunt visited me in Germany. She took me to a zoo where I petted a lemur. I've had tons of visitors, so I've been showing people around. We had some Americans visit our church. I volunteered to show them around our town, cause it's really pretty. It ended up raining that day, but it's Germany, so that's really nothing new. So we were walking them through the town and they were so miserable in their cloth Tom shoes. (not made for rain) So anyways, I forget stuff about american culture. Like when you stay in a hotel across the street from wal-mart you still have to drive there, cause there's no traffic lights for pedestrians and also no sidewalks. And I've recently realized that Americans don't walk in bad weather. Yes I'm sure there's exceptions. Like for a romantic scene at the end of a movie, or when you're having a mud fight, or when you have to park really far away from the mall. So if you come and visit me I'll probably make you miserable and walk a million kilometers in the rain. And you'll hate Germany, and I'll have no idea why.

Ok I really shouldn't post this, cause one it's late and two I'm going through that phase of culture shock where you love everything about the culture you're in and get annoyed with your own birth culture. So, if you stay with me thanks. I'm going to get through this. And besides I always love American food the mostest.

At the safari where I pet a lemur, there was a monkey cage where if you came in with a backpack the monkey would jump on your back and open it like a professional pick pocket. It was awesome...I'm probably only saying that, cause I didn't have a backpack. But then again I didn't get to hold a monkey on my back. Pluses and negatives.

The New Swear Words

Swear word change. When I was a kid, swear words were the words that you weren't supposed to say in front of really holy people cause you'd offend them...and probably get kicked out of elementary school.

One time when I was a teenager, I was running late and I thought my parents had left without me. I ran down the stairs and only saw my brother, so I said, "Oh crap, did they leave without me?" I looked a little closer and realized that my mom was standing there too. She had heard me say crap. Oh man was I in trouble. Mom asked me, "Do you know what that means?" I giggled and told her no. That day my mother didn't tell me what crap meant. But it's ok I already knew.

The new swear words are, oh man i can't believe I'm actually going to write these on my blog, but here it goes. "Buffalo Chicken Wings, Taco Bell, El Toros, dill pickles, and soft gooey chocolate chip cookies." Uhg, I can't bare it. Those words are forbidden in our house. You want to know why? Cause those are all of the foods that I can't get anymore. Just hearing those words when I'm hungry make my mouth water. I remember wanting food or being hungry for food when I was in the USA, but now how I miss spicy Mexican food doesn't even compare. Oh sigh.

But honestly those things aren't that important. I mean while I'm grumbling because I can't have a sour dill pickle I'm hearing the same grumbling that the Israelites where doing in the wilderness. God was providing them with manna everyday. He fed them everyday, but they got sick of it and they complained. God did end up giving them the meat they were begging for, but it's like when a spoiled child begs for a toy at the store and the parent just gives in to make the kid shut up.

I mean seriously, what do I sound like to God? Do I say my prayers and say thanks before dinner, but really the whole time I'm thinking, I've had such better food? Do I sound like a spoiled rotten kid that only wants to eat what I want to eat? The answer is yeah sometimes I do.

Prisoners and Thug Kids

Recently, we had a nine active prisoners visit our church. It was kind of a scary thing. Yes our church agreed to it, yes it was my husband, Z, that was behind the whole thing, but scary for a 20 something year old girl. Z knew all the prisoners that were coming, so I comforted myself with that knowledge. I went to church a little nervous and little hesitant about the whole situation. So when I was at church I prayed that God would protect us all today. Everything was fine at church. The guys were really nice and normal even.

Later that day Z was in town and wanted to know if I would meet him downtown so we could go on a walk. It was one of the first gorgeous days of spring. So I was riding my bike downtown. I came to a crosswalk where I needed to wait for the light to change so I could cross. I stopped a distance from it because there was a group of four teenager boys that kind of looked tough. As I stopped one of them approached me and asked me something. That alone was kind of weird. Usually strangers don't talk to me here. What I thought he said was, "McDonalds." I figured he meant where's McDonalds. So I answered him. Then something weird happened. The four guys surrounded me. It was totally awkward and I really didn't know what was going on. I wanted to be friendly, but I'm not so good at small talk in German. But I noticed that the traffic light had changed, so I said excuse me and was on my way. As I rode away they started to laugh. I figured they were laughing at my German. I must have said something ridiculous or maybe just my accent. Then I noticed an angry Z across the busy road. He had seen the whole thing and asked what they said to me. Totally naive I told them they wanted to know where McDonalds was, but they laughed at me, so now I just don't know what they wanted. And the more I thought about it the less likely it was that what they wanted to know where McDonald's was.

Apparently as I rode away one of them had pretended to smack my butt and little did they know that my husband had watched them do that. Part of me thinks it would have been awesome to see those kids face if they really would have smacked my butt. Can you imagine what those kids would have done when a big muscular angry husband came to kick their butts??? That would have been AMAZING! Like a movie or something. But lets focus on God. He is always looking out for me. I don't know why when those kids circled me and I was able to get away so easily. I don't know why they didn't take my purse and bike. But thought back to that morning where I was surrounded by scary prisoners and asked God to protect us. He did, and He never stopped. It's strange to me that I was doing something so ordinary, something I do daily and wasn't thinking I needed God to protect me at that moment, but He did it anyways. He even had a back up plan in case I was too dumb to ride away.

Another and hopefully my last airport story

As I was traveling back from Germany to America after my first six months here I was so excited after a long trip to see America again. I was so excited to go back and be able to order pizza without any struggles or unwanted extra attention. So my husband and I got off the plane with our custom forms filled out and standing in line with all the other Americans! I was thrilled! Like kiss the floor excited! All smiles! My husband was not so happy. He had a cold and when you fly with a cold it's a miserable experience. His ears where all clogged up so every time he would say anything he would yell it.

This was my very first experience with going through customs. (When you enter Europe you barely notice that you went through it.) So we went up to the desk with out filled out form and handed it to a very stern woman. She said, "You didn't put a date." I said, "Oh sorry, what is the date? She replied, "15 March" By the way she said it you would have thought I just asked if it was ok if I brought a 10 oz bag of Marijuana with me. So I went to write the date. When I was in Germany I had learned to write the day first and then the month, but now that I was in the USA I reminded myself to write the month first then the day. The customs lady was pissed about that. She gave me a look that was meant to put the fear of the United States government in me. It did. She told me as if it were of the utmost importance and I had broken a major law, "I told you the day first then the month." Uuuhhhh...ok sorry lady. Luckily she let us in despite the horrible thing I had done.

We went to claim our baggage so we could put it right back onto another baggage claim belt. (I don't get the point of that.) As we were walking I was still totally excited and my husband looked like a zombie, the security stopped him to ask him a few questions about what he was bringing into the country. He could barely hear anything. They'd ask a question and he'd yell his response back to them. I told my unaware husband that he was yelling his answers and the security guys just glared at me. Oops, controlling wife, not a good look for me.

We got rid of our bags and went through the medal detectors. I flew through them, since I had practical slip on shoes and no belt, while my husband had on a belt, a watch, quadruple knotted tennis shoes. Every time we went through security I was always way faster and I guess in a hurry to get to the next place. So finally he was getting sick of it! I was getting ready to bolt to to find some of that amazing American food that I missed and he's trying to put his belt on, and he yells at me, "Why are you always running away from me when my pants are falling down?" He had no idea that he had yelled till he noticed curious eyes staring at him.

Ok just so my he doesn't feel so alone, what's something you've blurted out and wish you could take back?

Travel Tips

We went to Rome five years ago. We went with one of those super cheap airlines--Ryan Air. They can shuttle you around Europe for like 25 euros a ticket. I found out the flight was only going to take an hour and a half. So I decided to forgo my usual motion sickness medication. I figured the stuff makes me so drowsy and it was such a short flight it wouldn't matter. Of course when we got in the plane I started to get nauseous. One of the stewardesses came around offering drinks. I asked for sprite hoping it would settle my stomach. She handed me a miniature sized can and cup and then said, "That's 3 euros." We were like what? Since when do we pay extra for drinks? We begrudgingly handed over the money. The rest of the flight the stewardesses walked up and down the aisles selling everything. Alcohol, weird little toys that looked like they were made out of rubber bands, cologne, and who knows what else. We tried to tune it out. We were smarter now. We were fast learners. They were even selling bus tickets into the city, but we already lost 3 euros on a tiny Sprite, we weren't going to be tricked again.

So we got to the airport in Italy and were trying to figure out how to actually get to Rome from this airport. We went to ask a lady behind a desk. We stood in line and Z, my husband, went ahead and asked in German if she spoke English. (Yes, we were in Italy) The lady looked at him oddly and said, "I speak German and English, which would you prefer." We chose English, because this was really before we actually spoke German. We found out we should have purchased our bus tickets on the plane because they were cheaper there. So we lost a few more euros, but bought our tickets.

We got on the bus and we were both eager to see a bit of Italy, but I was feeling really nauseous from the plane ride. I was so dizzy from the trip, and I had such a bad headache I just kept my eyes closed for the 20 minute ride into town. Z was having a great time. He would tell me every once in a while to open my eyes to look at a ruin, then say "oh sorry honey I guess you didn't look in time." At one point he got really excited and said look a prostitute! Neither of us had ever seen a real live prostitute before. We're from small towns alright, that was exciting stuff to us. So after I missed all that excitement we finally got to the center of town. I was feeling even worse after that wild ride. Bus drivers drive like maniacs, I think it's part of their training--drive this bus like it's a Lamborghini.

I got my luggage and we were trying to figure out where we were. It was dark out and despite the fact that we were in the center of Rome, we didn't really know what that meant exactly. So we were standing on a curb and realize that I was really sick, like I'm about to throw up. I call out to my husband, who is apparently so engrossed in studying his map that he's walked away from me. I was standing by myself throwing up on the curve holding my own hair in a foreign city. Hesitantly, another tourist came over to ask me if I was ok. I wasn't but I said I was and walked away to go yell at my husband.

A few days later after a lovely time in Rome we went to get back on our bus to head back to the airport, as I was putting my suitcase in the under the bus storage area another passenger was swinging his large bag into the compartment. He swung it directly into my head. I wobbled off to go find my husband who was once again absent and happened to miss that fine moment of mine.

And that's kind of what traveling is like with us. We're a mess. If you don't believe me you can read this old post about Z and his problems with getting through airport security.

So my travel tip is, do the opposite of what we did and you'll do great!

Sometimes I love my life, sometime I don't

Love:

Super late Sunday night, actually Monday morning, we had a Super Bowl Party here in Germany! It was awesome. The sports announcers even greeted our tiny town! We were all so excited! We had tons of great food! We got to watch the super bowl with a bunch of Americans and Germans! And thanks to our influence everyone there was rooting for the Packers!!! My husband's birthday is today and he's still on cloud nine because his favorite team won. He's calling it the best birthday present ever, and I'm ok with that.

Don't Love:

I started a new art class, the teacher basically told me all the art supplies I have are way too cheap and for school kids. I felt like crap. I didn't have a list of what I needed. It said that they would tell me when I got there. Everyone else seemed to know what to bring.

Love:

That my German is good enough that I understood the class well and people didn't seem to think my German was bad. One person even complimented it. Instead of taking another German course, I thought, I'd try something where I could improve my German and meet Germans. In language school I of course only meet foreigners, and most of the foreigners that I've met have left the country.

Love:

Getting complements on my German. Seriously, last Thursday I met someone and they told me I had only a small accent and my German was quite good! Do you know how you felt in high school and a cute boy gave you a complement? I felt that good for days after that! And trust me it was not a cute boy or anything that said that. That's what us language learning people love to hear. Now I'm not saying my German is that good, but one person mistook it for being good. So I'm excited.

Don't love:

The sometimes brutal honesty we get from Germans. I mean it's seriously rough sometimes. It's like please lie to me a little. Like please don't tell me what you really think of my haircut. I have to live with it for awhile.

Kind of Love:

They don't lie to you, they don't fake friendly. Sales associates don't pretend to be your best friend. I've worked at plenty of stores in america where my job was to be miss perky friendly sales girl at whatever store. That's not my natural personalty, so it's nice that I can go in a store and no one necessarily greets me. Although the negative side of that is the customer service here is pretty stinky. I think at some stores they're paid to be rude. Maybe the more costumers they ignore the better Christmas bonus they get. But that's ok, because if you ignore me I'll just find it cheaper on amazon.

Love:

Germany, the people I've met, the life I have here. The culture that I've been able to discover because I've lived here for a while. Do you know that when someone has known someone for a long time here and they switch from the formal way of addressing each other to the informal, they will reintroduce themselves to each other using their first name. Yeah, so even if you've known this person for 10 years and obviously know what their first name is and have both decided to switch, you kind of stop the conversation and reintroduce and shake hands. Weird, I know. Luckily for me, most people just use the informal with me. All though it would be fascinating to do this.

Don't love:

Germans always talk about how cheap and flimsy american houses are compared to their 500 year old stone houses. I don't know why, but this more than anything, drives me crazy. Maybe because German houses sometimes drive me crazy. See post here. They seem to think that if a tornado came to Germany their houses would be fine. Which brings me to final point.

Love:

That Germany doesn't have any major storms. Thunderstorms are almost nonexistent. When a thunderstorm comes I barely take notice. Germans will talk about it later and I'll be like, that little storm? Huh? Yeah I guess the sky made a grumble sound. And no tornadoes! Woohoo!

Guess what, the "loves" outweigh the "don't loves," so I'm pretty happy in Germany. I love the friendships I have here. There's something deep and strong about our friendships here. Germans have thick walls, but somehow the relationships that we have feel so strong. That's a huge "Love." So even though today was bit of a tough day, after writing this and looking back at my weekend I've got to say I'm happy with the friendships I have and am building on!

So what about you, what do you love/don't love?

Spoiled...

About a year ago, I was feeling really down about being here. I didn't have many friends at all. I was so lonely. I was writing in my journal and my writing turned into a prayer to God. I specifically asked God this, "Please help me to have Christian women to talk to. I need something." A week and a half later I visited some friends for a weekend. I wasn't particularly close to them before this. I don't know why, but my friend decided we'd leave the boys and have girls only breakfast. And that morning she let me pour my heart out to her, actually I take that back, she forced me to pour my heart out to her. Despite the fact that I was wanting this so badly, there was no way I was going to actively search for a shoulder to cry on. I didn't even realize till two months ago that I had written that. I looked at the date of the journal entry and that's when I remembered that a week and a half later God had sent someone to me.

This past December, my husband and I were dreading taking the public transportation. The whole month of December was a blizzard! To get to church it take about two hours using trains. About an hour of that is outside waiting on connecting trains or walking from the train station to church several miles. (I'm not looking for pity, this is just important details for the story.) In December, I don'think we walked from the train station to church once. There was always someone who offered to drive us there. One time we were on our way home and were happy because God had provided someone to drive us to the train station. We knew we would have to wait for a connecting train for a half an hour in a cold dark train station. It was really cold that night and neither of us were dressed warm enough. The half an hour was really long and cold. We got on the train and were glad to have a place to warm up for another half an hour, because we knew we didn't have any bikes waiting for us. So were gearing up for the half an hour walk home. The problem was that after that train ride, we still weren't warm. We walked slowly out of the train station and put our hats and gloves on. When we walked out the door we saw someone we knew. He was waiting for his ride to get there. Not only that, but they had a DVD to return to the rental place near our house.

That isn't the only time God provided rides for us during the month long blizzard. He was so good to us during that time! He still is. But it's brought me also to this conclusion, I'm spoiled by God. I just noticed this the other day. I was searching desperately for a piece of paper. I searched for days! Finally I decided it was time to pray about it. So I did. A lot of times when I do this, there are like almost instant results. God is that awesome. But this time nothing happened. It turned out we had to make a phone call to get the info we needed. It really wasn't that hard, but when God didn't answer my prayer the way I wanted I was shocked. It was then that I told Z that I was spoiled by God. He agreed.

So I know you hear a lot about when God doesn't answer your prayers. And I don't mean to play that subject down at all, but seriously, He is really good.

So what are some ways God has answered your prayers?