Nachtsüber, part II

"Übrigens fand ich Ihre Wortschöpfung 'nachtsüber' sehr

anerkennenswert. Warum nicht?" 

-Frau Clayton, German instructor back in California, speaks up for my non-word nachtsüber, which cost me half a point on my German final exam here in Germany.

"Work"

So, work's been treating me well. Everyone is prejudiced because I do my work for my internship at home. That seems to make it non-work. Everyone does air-quotes when they ask me if I worked today. Like, Anna, hast du heute viel "gearbeitet?" 

Just after I began my internship with Spirit of Football (background info on that posted here), I became a little bit irrelevant because the two sites I was going to blog for, FourFourTwo and Todo-Aleman, both didn't need me anymore.  What happened with the first one was that someone from a company called Substance PR who has one of Spirit of Football's partners as a client also pitched a blog to FourFourTwo on the same exact topic. And FourFourTwo went, "Well, Anna's doing that already, you should talk to her." And the guy from Substance sent me his work and I realized he actually knew things about football/soccer, and was using soccer words and quoting people I hadn't heard of, so I wrote him and said, "Look, just take it! You do it!" It's probably better for Spirit of Football to have someone who is interested in the sport write their blog for a sports site, I reasoned.

And I still had a regular writing assignment with the website Todo-Aleman, the trilingual project of the Goethe-Institut. I was to take over Andrew's blog there about The Ball's journey through Africa. However, after I sent my first post to them, they wrote back saying they didn't need me to write for them anymore and they would just link to Andrew's blog, theball.tv. I phoned them up and asked why, and Marcus from Todo-Aleman explained that with budget cuts it was necessary to cut down on the amount of staff who receives and edits work. It was cheaper to link to a site which would essentially say the same thing.

Then we got to talking and Marcus asked where I was even from anyway, and I said the States- California to be exact (exaggerated compliments were payed to my German, as is custom). Turns out Marcus has lived and worked in California. And he knows San Luis Obispo, my home town! It's pretty there, he said. I agreed. Then he asked what I was doing in Erfurt. I unloaded the unwieldy title Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange for Young Professionals. (Every time I say that I feel like I'm pulling a tuba out of a clarinet case and dropping it on the breakfast table!). He was familiar with the program. I explained a bit more about how I'd come to learn German and get interested in German culture, and he said that was the sort of thing they were interested in promoting at Todo-Aleman. (The site can be viewed in English, German or Spanish, and its target audience is young people in North and Latin America.) Then he asked me if I wouldn't mind writing a 5-part series about living abroad, starting with 2005 when I lived in the Swiss Alps. I agreed. It's really a more fitting subject for me to be writing about anyway.

The first episode, which I wrote in English, is being translated into German and Spanish and will be published on the site soon. Hopefully. I'll let you guys know. My three (3) loyal followers. 

I was happy to get some sort of writing work, even if it was not related to my internship. However, I have also been doing things which are related to my internship! I've also been writing press release after press release, reporting on the progress of The Ball's pilgrimage to Johannesburg. The goal is the World Cup and there are, if I am correct, just 93 days left to go. 

Recently I wrote to the British embassies in all of the African countries where The Ball will be passing through and requested that their Ambassador or High Commissioner meet with the Spirit of Footballers, perhaps attending an event with their partner, Special Olympics Africa. Some embassies haven't written me back, while others have been really keen. The High Commissioner in Zambia seemed really friendly and wrote a nice email about the power of sport to connect people from all different backgrounds. I should quote her on that.

Aside from my internship and random writing assignments, I am still working at the Erfurter Sprachschule, where I teach English. So far no one has noticed that I am not a teacher. Shh.

This evening I went to Übersee with Douglas and he brought an important fact to my attention: Unterrichtsstunden (instruction hours) are only 45 minutes long. Not 60. This entire time I have been adding them up as whole hours, meaning my 90 minute courses go down as an hour and a half, not two hours. I have been working there since November and I didn't know this. Fortunately I asked to be paid at the end of the courses, which meant I only added up my hours and gave them to my boss yesterday. 

I just sent him a teensy little email, saying, "Oops-didn't know about the Unterrichtsstunden." 

Off to dreamland. Sleep tight, Erfurt.

The Theatah. Dahling.

 

Photo thanks to Katherine's Handy. 

On Sunday I went to the Opera with InWent. The Merry Wives of Windsor in German. It was a bit more of a modern adaptation. Some caterpillars made out. That was my favorite part. Where is my Fotoapparat when I need it??

Mostly awake is slightly asleep

Hello, dear readers. All two of you.

When I first awoke this morning I had this sentence in my head, clear as anything: "She went to a French school, where she drank blood from a paper cup." I don't know where that came from. I am crazy. Second spontaneous thought I had was: "I miss Sandercock Street."


It's true. And I miss Linnaea's Cafe. I miss Heather. I miss dollars. I miss falling asleep with my cat smothering my air supply. I miss the lady at Scolari's who always asked me how my cat was doing when I bought cat food. I miss Simpler Times beer.  I miss Cooper cracking open a can and pretending to be in a commercial, saying campily, "When times are getting a little too complicated...reach for Simpler Times." I miss pouring latte art. I miss the beach. I miss having more friends around than I knew what to do with.  I miss palm trees. I miss bonfires. I miss Mexican food. I miss random spontaneous gatherings in the shower. I miss reading by the creek. I miss staying in the pool all day when it was too hot to do anything else.  I miss breakfast out on the porch in the sun.

 

Hijacking pool in empty apartment complex

But I'm still far from ready to go home to San Luis Obispo. I have so much more to do and see, so many more cool German words to learn. And I don't even have a place on Sandercock anymore. Unless you count my sister's place, where I will probably end up, penniless, begging for a scrap of carpet to sleep on. Cooper lives in San Francisco now. Nothing will be exactly as I remember it.

I had another German dream the night before last. I dreamt I got on the wrong train and there were only senior citizens in it. As the train drove off, I noticed that there was only one car to the train. I realized my error and started to panic. I asked the man next to me, "Where is this train going?" and he said, "Anywhere! That's the beauty of it. We don't know."

 

Strange shot of me grooving to electro with my sister Heather

Quirks

Why do I always forget to eat? Why do I cook things and then walk away, then come back two hours later and find them? I did this again yesterday.

I suppose it's just a quirk. My youth pastor back in California (a long time ago) used to have a strange problem in which he would pick things up without noticing. If he was deep in a conversation, you could sneak up to him and put something in his hand and walk away, and he would grab it automatically and keep talking. Then 5 minutes later he would finally notice that he was holding a book/magic marker/rubber ducky, and would go, "All right-who did this? Who was it this time?" And all the kids would giggle.

I think it's something similar to that.

I also sometimes talk without meaning to. It's a problem. It's like sleep-talking, but without the sleeping part (speaking of which, get a load of this guy.) I just start mumbling what I'm thinking, (but I think I'm only thinking it) and then I notice people looking at me and I think, was I just talking? Or was I only thinking? And then someone goes, "What did you say?" And I scoff and go, "I didn't say anything."

Yesterday in the car back from Ikea, I was lost in thought and then I noticed Micha looking at me strangely and I thought, was I just talking out loud? And if so, what did I say? And in what language?

When I first got an ipod I had to listen with just one ear bud in, because if I listened with both I would accidentally start singing along in public!

I guess some people just have their heads in the clouds. Some of us say what we're thinking on accident, and some of us pick things up on accident. To paraphrase Elizabeth Gilbert, some of us have only one foot on the earth, and really, really long legs.