This past Saturday Logan, Chris, Connor and I went to our friends house in Magdeburg. It's about 2 hours (on the train) southeast of Berlin. Here's a little Wikipedia for ya http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdeburg.
The family Grunert (I really need to get some pics up here) live in Magdeburg. Chris was friends with Volker Grunert. Volker died of a brain tumor back in 1996 or '97 I believe. He was only like 28 years old. He is missed. Volker is survived by his sister Annchia (sp?) and parents; Christal and Gehart (sp?). Sorry I'm bad at writing German names :-( Volker's sister Annchia is married to Andreas and they have two boys; Christian (12) and Henrich (8).
We love this family so very much. They are good good friends. We are lucky to have them nearby. It's always wonderful to visit them. On this visit I was armed with lots of new German words. I was determined to speak German.
We had a tough train ride. Connor usually naps from 11-1/2ish and we didn't leave our flat until noon. Once on the train he was crazy. Over tired and hungry. We feed him but getting him to nap was going to be difficult. All he wanted to do was walk or run all over the train. Chris and I took turns chasing him down. Logan sat back and laughed.
Once we got to Magdeburg we met up with Andreas. He took us to their house. They have a lovely home btw. Immediately I began to speak German. Slowly of course but I was speaking German. The Grunerts understand English pretty well and like me with German are slow (and a little shy perhaps) to speak. It was fun I think for all of us. By the end of the evening I was tired and was looking forward to the quite ride home on the train (knew the kids would both sleep and they did).
Chris said I did well. He said I was much more confident as the day/evening worn on.
Today Chris and I spoke some German to each other. It was fun. Again I'm slow to speak but he understood what I was saying which is of course important.
Life Balance in Germany for Expat Families
11 hours ago
Posts
2 comments:
Good for you. It's all about confidence - at least I know that's the case with my Spanish. I speak well enough to make myself understood, when I'm not too embarrassed to try.
Yay! It'll only get easier every day now. I was finally gettting into a bit of the swing of things in Mexico when we had to leave. You're going to have such fun with it, but yes, I'm sure it's going to be tiring for a while!
Post a Comment