i'm only happy when it rains

the conversation the israeli diplomat and i had with sandra, our teacher, yesterday had immediate effects. when i got to class today, everyone was standing outside the classroom. sandra was inside with the door closed setting up nametags and hiding candy.

when i walked in the room, i chuckled quietly to myself (cqtm - it's like lol but better. i've been trying to get people to use it, but no one has picked it up): she had set us up into groups - i was sitting with the people who were really good at german. the iraqi girl, who i have decided bothers me because she is always trying to correct people (not in that helpful sort of way, in the 'i know' sort of way) and shouting out answers when someone else is answering, was at the table on the other side of the room (with those who are having a bit more difficult time). i felt like i was one of the cool kids.

to help us learn prepositions, sandra had placed little werther's originals all over the room. when we found one, we were supposed to tell her where we found it "on the table," "under the tv," "between the green frog and the notebook." then we could eat it. until i just looked them up on wikipedia, i thought werther's were an odd choice of candy to use - i just learned that they are from berlin. gasp! i totally assumed they were american. i do this a lot - assume things are american just because i am. like george michael or cheddar cheese. [a side note: i learned about cheddar cheese's origin when i was going to school in france and my friend whitnee and i were having one of those "great things come from AMERICA" conversations with our friends from england who were having the same conversation, but in their mind, "great things come from ENGLAND." whitnee and i were like, "yeah, cheese isn't all from france. cheddar cheese is american." our friends were aghast, "no! it comes from CHEDDAR, ENGLAND." right. that was embarrassing.]

so, werther's are german. i am not a huge caramel fan (do you say car-mel or car-a-mel? i say carmel), so i wasn't going to eat it, but then i thought of my grandfather and decided to do so. my grandpa joe passed away from colon cancer when i was 10. before he died, he was limited in his ability to walk so he always sat in this brown rocking chair in my grandparent's apartment in fargo. whenever we would go over to visit, as soon as we walked in the front door, he would throw us a werther's. as i sucked on the candy, i thought of him - he was a great grandpa.

anyway, the israeli diplomat got to class late, and when she sat down next to me she kind of winked. we knew. we were in the know. class was actually kind of fun. we watched this funny video to learn the prepositions. basically, prepositions are a bitch in german. or maybe the whole german language is, but we're just learning prepositions. depending upon what you are saying, after a preposition the article will change. here is a funny video we watched in class demonstrating this very notion:


it was a good class with lots of learning and when we were done, it was raining. i had to go to the post office, so i asked the israeli diplomat to give me a ride. on the way, she asked me what i was planning to do next. i told her some of my ideas and she told me she was very disappointed in me because she thinks i am very smart (i said, "you dont know that!") and thinks i should do more. this was right before we got to the post office so as i left the car she said, "we're going to talk about this more later!" i've been warned.

to end the day, i spent the rest of the night watching diggnation because when i got home - gasp! - i discovered that i had filled up my whole computer with videos. so now i have to delete a lot of them. life is so difficult when you have nothing to do.