Auf die Bahn nochmal

For those of you who find screwball translations humorous, that title is the rough translation for:
"On the road again"

I amused myself on our 16hour car trip by translating random things into German because, as we all know, everything is more laughable in another language. Arrived at German camp today, only two more nights until I have to sign away my native tongue and assume the position of one in a foreign society trying to make do, saying please and thank you and excuse me and how do you say I'd like to sit here is this seat taken? in a language that's not completely your own. Yet.
They tell me that by the time week 7 is over, I'll be reading and writing with more fluency than I thought possible. Hopefully.

Tomorrow morning I rise at 7am and prepare myself for the four hour placement test that will tell me how much or little German I know. And to Cristi - they have a fizzy water machine in the dining hall. Tell me that this isn't a few steps below Heaven - fizzy water and chickpeas and fresh fruit and Ben & Jerry's ice cream oh my!

The blogging will be sporadic after Sunday - unless you read German, of course.

Sam the Biedermeier painting

Yesterday we took Sam out to the park. It was only about 78, perfect weather for sitting on a bench and drinking a beer while watching my dog sniff romantically into the green fields. There is a part of my Louisiana heritage that says it's completely acceptable to drink beer out of a plastic cup in public places. I don't actually know if this is legal in Indiana but when you've just bought a 6-pack of Pyramid Apricot Ale (which is really good, if you haven't tried it) it calls for breaking out the Mardi Gras cups and a little sneaky open container hijinx.

After about half an hour of throwing the ball around, Sam pooped out and just flopped down in the grass. I love those summer days. That's all I want to do today. Flop down in the grass and read Harry Potter in German (with the handy dandy Harper/Collins dictionary by my side, of course) and sip fizzy water with lime - I know Cristi will appreciate this. As soon as I went to Europe, fizzy water seemed like the part of my diet that was missing all this time.
That and it's really hard to get flat tap water in Germany. They look at you like you're nuts and then bring you a liter of Gerolsteiner anyway. Apparently, you're going to drink that fizzy water whether you like it or not. (insert really bad Mr. Hart German joke here)

Tomorrow, ich gehe aus Middlebury so I can learn to sprech better Deutsch. Cross your fingers I won't go completely verruckt.

Leaving Las Vegas

Or Bloomington, as it were. Today I went to school to print out some paperwork and stopped by the financial aid office to officially hand back my AI. It was surreal, being in there and telling them that I'm leaving and accepting that today could be the last day I set foot in that building where my little closet of a studio lived on the third floor with the psychotic harpsichordist professor around the corner who banged on my door every time I practiced Lakme and the long dark hallway of other voice studios filled with wannabe cast members of Wicked and the eccentric early music kids (no offense friends) talking about groppos and mordents and whether or not well-tempered could exist in a climate controlled building. I've gotten a string of emails from my students: average age 18, ambitious musical theatre kids who showed up in their leotards and jeans from ballet class, holding their tap shoes, bringing in extra music to learn for their auditions, writing out their French IPA and tape-recording their German pronunciation so they could check it against their IPA and seeking the eternal perfection of the correct [i] vowel while learning the correct style interpretation of Cole Porter and why Sondheim is different than Schwartz and yes it's a ballad so sing it like a ballad I don't care how Bernadette Peters does it and no you cannot belt that high today because you're not warmed up and besides, don't you have some Italian to speak to me today? I will miss them so much.

It's 75 and sunny. Thanks to the new contacts I got this morning, I can see things with more clarity and as such, I'm going to sit on my back porch swing with my beer while I still can. Don't get into too much trouble while I'm gone.

Tacky-cardigan

Sounds like 'tachycardia' only with a little more panache. Tonight, when my pulse rate spiked for no apparent reason (I was watching Harry Potter 2 on television and I don't care what anyone says, it's not THAT inflammatory) I called my dad to tell him, he being the resident cardio-guru. He says to me, "So, you're feeling a little tacky tonight?"

Those of you who have met my father realize that this is just another facet of his ever inappropriate humor, especially in times of crisis. I was lucky he didn't make a joke about people from Pearl River ala Jeff Foxworthy in the same breath.

So an hour later, after wrapping myself around Spiehler the stuffed dog and taking my pulse every ten minutes, it went back down to my daily sub-normal pulse rate. And I don't even have a tacky cardigan to show for it.

Hope everyone had a good weekend.