Denken auf Deutsch

Exercise time is German time for me now. In preparation for our trip, I'm pulling out my old college German textbook and while riding the exercise bike, I'm brushing up on my dative/accusative prepositions, vocabulary, and irregular conjugations. It's encouraging to me how much of my 3 long lost years of German is coming back to me. It's also alarming when I realize more and more how much I don't know. Speaking a foreign language is often frustrating for me. Because I enjoy the nuances and complexities of language when speaking in English, being reduced to a 1st grade level of speaking proficiency is galling to me. So even though I have a native German speaker as a friend, I never use it, especially since she speaks better English than some native speakers. Of course, I realize that's going to be the case with most of the people I encounter in Germany. I'm probably going to study and study and then not use it for anything more than reading signs.

But I am having fun. German is a pretty logical language, and most of the words are compound ones that make for amusing ideas. For instance, ein Schrank is a cabinet. A refrigerator is ein Kuhlschrank (literally a "cool cabinet"). A freezer is ein Tiefkuhlschrank (literally a "deep cool cabinet"). Eine Tasse is a cup. A saucer, then is naturally eine Untertasse ("under cup"). One word for a mat, like a bath mat, is ein Vorleger ("the thing that lays in front"). And an important one: Nachtisch ("after table") is dessert. I am driving Jen a little crazy by trying to say everything in German, or translating what I just said. "Because the door was open, I thought that you had gone downstairs" becomes "Weil der Tür geoffnet war, habe ich gedacht dass du hinunter gegangen wärst" or something like that.

Outside of German, things have been busy. The cotton from our trees is coming down like snow, except snow melts and this crap sticks around and gums up my lawn mower and gets tracked in the house until we either have a downpour or a mighty wind. So mowing this weekend was tough and ineffectual. There were many other chores, and I made some awesome chicken sandwiches and a decent ice cream pie for some friends that came over. We were so exhausted. We did little on Sunday other than church and a walk along Boulder creek.

Oh, I did get sucked into Angry Birds, now that it is free and runs in my browser. Then I got Jen sucked into it. Our productivity will take a hit for a while. I'm also getting drawn into the Tim Keller sermons even more. Today he was talking about the Fall and made a really good point about how the root sin, the root temptation in Genesis was to break our trust that God is good. The serpent was saying, "If you follow God, you're going to miss out. You're not going to get the good stuff." He didn't try to argue that God didn't exist, or that God didn't really say what He said. It was that God was keeping the good stuff for himself, wasn't looking out for us, and wouldn't give us what we needed if we followed Him. Wow. That's some good insight. I see that assumption buried deep in a lot of my sins, especially those of omission. I don't step out in faith because of a root lack of trust that God is good and will take care of me or at least make it all work out for good. I'm looking forward to the rest of the CDs. I'm woefully ignorant of any current events, but this is the situation during NPR pledge drives. Well, with those lemons I'm making lemonade ... Oder soll ich 'Limonade' sagen?