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| In the process of cleaning my room before the big move back to America, I found a piece of paper on which I had written, sometime in the last semester, "I have been cooking since I was 12 years old. I cooked a special meal last week."
This is puzzling me: I have NOT been cooking since I was 12 years old, and I don't think I have EVER cooked a special meal.
Would anybody out there happen to have an explanation/theory for this??
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| As I stood in line at the grocery store this morning, I noticed that the two women in line ahead of me were speaking in English. That isn't unusual; there's an American military base just outside Ansbach and it's very common to see "Ami's" here. What surprised me was the (German) cashier! She very matter-of-factly addressed the women in German, not English, saying "acht Euro einunddreißig" instead of "eight thirty-one".
How is it that two people who are speaking English to each other and are obviously Americans are spoken to in German, but when I speak perfect German with an American accent, 75% of the time I am answered in English??
When I dropped photos off to be developed yesterday, I spoke German. But the photo-guy responded in English. I just gave up, smiled, and continued with him in English. When he told me to come back for my photos at "fifteen-hundred hours" it was so hard not to crack up laughing. OK, OK, I'm an American... but I'm not in the military!
When I picked the photos up a woman was working, and she started speaking in English, too. This time I kept on going in German and she kept right on in English, neither of us willing to compromise. Photo-lady: "You should have... a little piece of paper..." (to pick up my photos). Me: "Ah, ich hatte das vergessen! Ja, hier ist es." Photo-lady: "Forbes? Is that right?" Me: "Ja, genau." Photo-lady: "Four euros and forty cents." Me: "OK, danke schön!" Photo-lady: "You're welcome." Me: "Tschüß!" Photo-lady: "Bye!"
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| Listening to German radio this morning. The usual... the weather, traffic updates, reports about crime...
and then...
"Sunday was Father's Day in the U.S., and Paris Hilton's father visited her in women's prison. He admitted it was not the best Father's Day of his life, but Paris had a surprise for him: a handmade card with his photograph on it. Paris tries to make the best of her time by making crafts and reading positive fan mail..."
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| Whiny post warning!!!
A project for my Video-Editing class involves analyzing scenes from The Matrix, Star Wars, and Indiana Jones, and writing a 10-page report darüber. (Sorry, sometimes German words come more easily than English ones...)
Would anyone care to guess how many stinking shots are in a 4-minute long scene from The Matrix? 121. 121 that I was able to count, that is. And I just wrote every single one down. Close-up on Neo. Camera tracks with Neo and Morpheus as they move backwards. Extreme long shot. Close-up of Morpheus grasping Neo's foot. Two-shot medium long shot from above, camera zooms out. Two-shot medium close up cross-cut of Cypher and Trinity on ship.
Bleck! Bleck, bleck, bleck!
Now I get to analyze all these lovely shots and try to recognize the film editor's reasoning in why he put it all together the way he did. Write a couple of pages about it (but in English, thankfully), and then repeat the entire process two more times, with the two other movies.
Side note: in this context, "shots" translates to "Einstellungsgrößen" in German. Silly, complicated German language!
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