Interrogate me!

As of this morning, I am officially here in Germany by myself. I am now waiting for one of my friends to pick me up and take me to a city called Wupertal. While I am waiting, I will try and make an update here with as much updateageness that I have time for. I have taken lots of new pictures on my camera, but since I am currently using such a slow computer, I won't be able to upload any of them until I can get on a faster one.

When we first arrived in Dusseldorf, we went to the luggage pick-up place and everyone got their baggage just fine. I volunteered to carry the big create of supplies if someone else was willing to wheel my luggage out. Just as we are walking out the door of the luggage pick-up room and into the main lobby, I noticed several German airport security guards eyeing the create I was carrying. In my head I was almost hoping that I would get pulled aside so that I could practice my German. Suddenly, one of the Guards walks in front of me and says, "Guten Morgen." (Good morning.) Inside I said, "Yeessss!" I don't know why I wanted to practice my German so badly that I WANTED to be interrogated for entering the country.

As the guards pulled me into the private room and asked me what was in the create, I suddenly realized that I wasn't 100% exactly sure what was in the crate. I was hoping that Brian and Kristi didn't pack anything other than "stuff for kids" because that's what I told them. I set the crate on a metal table facing me and one of the guards walked around to the other side of the table behind the crate while another stood to my left. The one behind the table said, "Please open the create." I politely obliged praying that "stuff for kids" would really be found inside. As the create opened, a huge sigh of relief swept over me as I saw markers and crayons and… "stuff for kids."

Then the guard to my left said, "May I see your plane ticket?" I suddenly got a flashback of just 9 hours ago as I was sitting in the plane waiting for it to take-off. I remember folding the plane ticket in half, and then again, and again until it was a tiny, tiny ball of paper that could not be folded anymore. Then I remembered twisting it in half just enough to tear it around the middle. I couldn't remember if I threw the ticket away, or if I kept it. Thinking that I may have stuck the spit-wad-sized ticket into my backpack, I opened up the top pocket and shoved my hand deep down to the bottom to feel for any tiny balls of paper. When my fingers bumped into a ball of paper I said, "Here is my ticket," as I pulled out the flea-sized ball. The guards gave each other a weird look as they saw me start to unfold the little ball with my fingernails and then carefully try to open each fold without tearing it anymore than it already was. As I offered up the defiled ticket to the guard, they couldn't hold back their laughter anymore and let me go.

The first few days here were "adjustment days" since there is such a big time change. (Right now it is 11AM here and it is 5AM back in Kentucky.) We had some nice people take care of us and show us around the city of Dusseldorf and Wupertal. After the first few "sight-seeing" days. We headed out to the retreat center two hours away to help as "childcare providers." I was with Logan and we worked with the 6-8 year olds. It was overall a great class. Nearly all the kids spoke German and English and of the 11 that we had, 2 didn't speak any English, so Logan and I had to rely on our German skills. One of the kids, Benjamin, was bilingual. I used him quite a bit as a translator since there was quite a bit of German that I still didn't understand from the German-speaking-only kids. As I was talking to one of the German kids in German, Benjamin asked me very strongly and interrogatively in English, "How can you speak German but you can't understand it?" I answered with, "Well, there are still a lot of words that I don't know." And he asked, "Where did you learn your German then?" I said, "In America." He thought for a second and then asked, "Who in America speaks German?" I just laughed and told him about the university.

One of the sessions went over by about an hour so we had a lot of time to kill with the kids. At one point one of the American kids, Noah asked if we could play a game he knew. I said sure and asked Benjamin if he could translate for him. All the kids sat down on the floor and watched Noah and Benjamin leaning against the wall in the front as Noah would explain some and Benjamin would translate some. It was such an awesome sight for me as an aspiring linguist to see such young kids with such an ability to switch easily between two languages.

I met so many new people from all over the world at the retreat. The retreat was for a church called "International Baptist Church" in Dusseldorf. It's an English-speaking church of people from everywhere. I have been wearing my favorite jacket here (the red one that Memaw gave me with the Canadian maple leaf on it,) and I had several Canadians ask me if I was Canadian. I met several people from England and had them help me with my lines in the Dinner Theater play that is coming up in a few weeks where I play an auctioneer who has an English accent.

One night we played an awesome German card game called "Bohnanza" with some of the Germans. We had such a great time playing and yelling "deals" (or as Jeff would say "good business") across the table in German. After we finished the game at about 1AM, we stayed up talking about German and English until 2:30AM. It was awesome. I asked one of the Germans, Janene if she could help me talk with a real German accent and she said that just by my accent, she would not be able to tell that I wasn't a native speaker of German. Feeling good about myself, I asked what "gave me away" as an American. She laughed and said, "Your word order!" Apparently, I generate some very interesting sentences. I guess I need to work on that. I guess wrong word order is not as bad as the wrong word like when I asked one German female to tell me about her love when I meant to say, "Tell me about your life."

Well, that's about all I have time for now, I am going to be staying in Wupertal for the next few days and then hopefully be going to Amsterdam on Thursday and staying there until Sunday or so. I will update again when I get access to another computer and hopefully upload more pictures.

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