Intensive German

Am in my second of five days of an intensive German language class at the Goethe Institute. Boy does my head hurt! Skip has had to arrange his schedule to be able to pick up Maddie at school since class lasts until from 9:30 to 5 p.m. Like I said, it's intensive. Due to some miscommunication, we thought going into it, that the class would only last until about 1 p.m. each day, so we had to do some fast shuffling when we realized what I had really gotten us into.

My class partner is a woman from Norway who speaks excellent English (she and her husband lived in Boston for two years while he was in grad school) and is here in Germany for 2 years. She is a veteranarian. It's really kind of comforting to have someone else in the class who also has had quite a bit of education and who also can't remember if it's das auto or der auto!

Ingunn has a 16-month old daugher and have already had their own cultural run-ins here in Germany. Apparently in Norway, people put babies and children outside to nap. The fresh air is good for them, so Moms and kindergartens just bundle 'em up and put them outside in their baby carrier or wagon on the porch or in the garden. So when Ingunn and her husband were at a restaurant, they sat at a window and put little Henrietta in her baby carrier just outside the window to sleep. One of the waitresses got semi-hysterical thinking that someone had dumped a baby at the restaurant. When Ingunn told her the baby was theirs, it didn't seem to help matters. The waitress said that they could not leave their baby outside and Ingunn and her husband thought the whole thing was very strange and the the waitress really over reacted.

I told her that we came from the opposite end of the spectrum and we are shocked to see six-year-old kids get on the train by themselves to go to school. I told her you would never send a child that young off by themselves on public transportation in the States. She found that very surprising.

I have visions of Ingunn and her family coming to visit us in the states and we'll just send the two girls off to play on Bowman Curve while we eat at the Buffalo Grill.