German Speaking Personal Assessment – 4 Month Check Up

My German is gradually getting (extremely gradually) better, though it has come a long way from the beginning.  I am at the point where I can communicate to people in German enough to get things done on a day to day basis without too much effort (or too much embarrassment).  I no longer lay in bed at 6 am trying to determine what I am going to say at the post office later that morning.

I can’t decide which, but the proper current assessment of my German is either a two year old child or a caveman.  At this point, it’s a combination of both.  I get the feeling that after I walk out of the bike shop after asking to get my bike tire fixed, the store clerk and his wife have a strong feeling that I am a pretty independent disabled person for going there all by myself. 

People have to listen very closely when I am speaking German.  It’s like a two year, where only the parent’s know what he or she is saying and has to interpret to everyone else.  Except for me, there is no one to interpret my Denglish (Deutsch and English combined.)  To make matters worse, I have to sometimes (okay a lot) throw in English words when I get stuck telling a story.  It’s my indirect way of asking if we can bring the conversation to English, if possible. 

Speaking of which, I have only admitted once in the last 4 months that I don’t speak English.  Dana, on the other hand, asks the question right away.  This can be both good and bad.  I don’t like Dana’s approach too much as we are learning the language, living in Germany, and need to have these awkward conversations to get better.  On the other hand, just guessing what people are saying and responding with a yes or a no, is going to get me in a lot of trouble if it hasn’t already.  I think I have already agreed to donate my organs to the gas station attendant when I die and I am 70% sure that I loaned 3 million euros to a guy at the park.  This is the problem with shaking your head and saying yes or no without knowing the question.   

If you would ask Dana, she would say I already acted like a cave man.  Now, I speak like one when I am trying to talk in German.   Because I struggle with the filler/transitional words, I mutter things like, ‘I bring paper now’ or, ‘You have key?’ Add this on top my normal scratching of myself and frequent grunts, and it all makes sense.  Is this why I don’t think the Geico Caveman commercials are funny at all?  I just believed that everyone thought they were stupid.   I, go, now. 

Running errands.  "So easy, even an (American that speaks like a) caveman can do it."

An invitation to our current and future friends in Borken

Borkener Zeitung Lokaler Sport page, Samstag, 15. Januar 2011

Today a half-page article came out in the Borkener Zeitung about us.  Thank you for the special attention, we only wish we had a better handle on the German language to actually read the article. Hopefully our quotes translated well.  We're glad we can share our embarrassing stories with the city.  I guess if we didn't feel comfortable about it, we wouldn't share our stories with the rest of the world on our blog. 

The purpose of this post is to make a request that we didn't mention during the interview with the newspaper. We were asked about the biggest differences between living in America and living in Germany, and although we gave honest answers, we did leave out one important difference: in America we were heavily involved with our church, but here we don't really know any other Christians.

We are still involved with our church in Jacksonville, Fla. - Celebration Church - and still attend by watching the services online every Sunday afternoon at 15:30 or 17:30 at http://online.celebration.org/. But what is missing for us is the fellowship with other Christians.

The homepage for Celebration Church - www.celebration.org - check it out!

So, we are using this blog post to put out an invitation to anyone in the Borken area who would like to start a Bible study with us.  If you're interested, please email me at: danafoltice@hotmail.com.

Secondly, if any of you are interested in joining us to attend one of Celebration Church's services online on an upcoming Sunday, also please email me.

Thanks and we hope to hear from you!

The Commute

I have an idea for a spin off movie from The Hangover. Actually, it’s based on my experience this past Monday. It would be appropriately called, The Commute.

Zach Galifianakis plays the man who gave me a push and later randomly meets me at a night club in the new movie, The Commute, based on a true story.  I would imagine (at least in my mind) Tom Cruise or James Franco playing the role of myself.

I left a snowy and icy Munster at 4:30 pm on Monday afternoon; giving me plenty of time to get back to Borken in time for basketball practice at 8 pm. As I got into my car, I could see traffic gridlocked as far as I could see. However, waiting until later would only mean more rush hour traffic, so I got into the car and jumped into the gridlocked traffic.

Once stuck in traffic, the ice on the road was so bad that it took a few seconds to get going in the “stop and go” traffic. At one point, I couldn’t gain any traction for a full minute and the guy who was driving behind me had to get out and give me a push. I wanted to pull over right then and there, but had no option to do that at the moment. I pressed on through the city center, skating from one street light to the next. In addition to the accidents on the road, only a handful of cars could get their cars going fast enough to make it through the intersection each light. It was a disaster.

Finally, the roads cleared a little bit by the time I made it to the Autobahn. I made it at a break neck pace of 60 km/hour (36 miles per hour) for a while down the Autobahn (so much for no speed limit) until the fog rolled in. And it rolled in quickly and was really thick. A couple miles later, and I can’t see a thing. Not only was I dealing with snow and ice on the roads, I was now contending with dense fog. I wondered if God was going to bring locusts next. The fog brought me out of the “Just really concentrate, go very slow and you’ll be ok” mode into the “Am I going to die?” mode. I reviewed our family’s life insurance policy in my head. That was my queue to get off of the Autobahn.

So, here is the new rule of life:

1. If you are doing something that makes you think about your life insurance policy, you should immediately stop!

I crawled off the Autobahn at the next possible exit. At the end of the exit, I could barely read the sign which was covered in snow telling me where the nearest towns were. I could see a couple of towns that were 8 & 10 km’s away to the right and there was a covered up name that was 1 km to the left. It was a no brainer: take a left to the no-named village 1 km away.

After driving 1 km that felt like 20 km’s I pulled into a parking lot of a small shopping center and stopped the car. I was safe, but now what? Where was I? What was I going to do?

I walked around the small city to figure out where I was. I saw that I was in a small town called Appel- something. There were a couple of restaurants, a brothel, a hotel, and a gas station from what I could see.

I found the town’s only pay phone near the center of town. I put in 50 cents and hoped for the best. I got a hold of Dana on the phone. I had 1 minute and 5 seconds to talk. Dana was met by a frantic voice saying, “It’s me. I am stuck somewhere near the Autobahn. I don’t know where I am, or what I am going to do tonight. All I know is that I am not driving any more. Please call Borgi” (my basketball coach.) She could tell I was really stressed, so she gave her best advice, “You will figure something out, I am sure. Good luck.” I was back on my own.

I went to Hotel Bonaparte to see what the room rates were, but nobody was there. The brothel’s neon signs clearly indicated it was open for business, and I contemplated for a moment if I could get a room for the night without committing to a ‘Thai massage.’ This was probably not a good idea. Now what?

It was only 6:30pm, so I had time to make it back to Munster, where at least there would be more options to stay. How would I get there? I asked a pedestrian if there was a train station in town and was told that there was one 15 minutes by foot down the road. I decided to make the long walk down the dark road to the train station.

This would be a good time to mention that it was 16 degrees (-8 degrees Celsius) and feeling in my legs were starting to go numb. I felt like Aubrey on Christmas Vacation when the family was out getting a Griswold Family Christmas tree.

15 minutes later, I found the train station. The only reason I found it was because I ran into the train tracks. The station was on the other side of the road, and because of the dense fog, I couldn’t see the train station.

Not surprisingly, the next train to Munster was delayed by 10 minutes when I arrived at the platform (Uncovered, by the way, from the cold weather). The delay grew to 20 minutes; then 30 minutes. As I waited on the platform, my legs started to lose even more feeling. I had to use the restroom, I think. How could I really know?

The train finally arrived before I involuntarily wet myself and it was a short ride back to Munster. Feeling came back to my feet and legs and I was on my way back to the office around 7:30pm. I called Dana from my office and explained, more calmly, the situation. I booked a cheap hotel in Munster to stay the night.

That’s pretty much where the story ends. The movie, called The Commute, could potentially add a crazier night in Munster to make it more interesting. I, on the other hand, ate a nice dinner and spent the night (18 month old child free) in Munster before working at the University the next day.  Nobody (at least they didn't tell me to my face) noticed that I was wearing the exact same outfit two days in a row. 


Later that day, I took the train back to Appelhulsen in the afternoon to retrieve the car (thank goodness it was still there and not towed away) and continued my journey back to Borken, 24 hours after leaving initially.

The Netto in Appelhulsen, where I left the van for the night.

Dizzy Dylan and Other Dylan Updates

Here's a little update about Dylan and what he's been up to lately. He hasn't had any tantrum episodes as bad as the night we went to see St. Nikolaus, but he's been on the verge a few times, usually when he's really tired or really cold from being outside. Mostly, though, he does a lot of fun and cute things.

First, Dylan really loves to spin around and around then see if he can walk while he is dizzy. It's pretty funny to watch him do this but we're always running after him try to protect him from table corners or walls. We call this "Dizzy Dylan" and usually when we say that to him, he starts to spin wherever he is. I tried to catch him on video and captured a pretty funny spill. To Dylan's defense, the lamp cord that he trips on isn't normally in that spot.

He talks a lot now and says many different words, especially words that begin with the letter "B" - like ball, book, baby, blanky, bird, banana, etc. He also says "Ocky" for Oscar, and "guck" for duck. When he wants to watch Sesame Street he says "Ernie! Ernie!" over and over again because Ernie is his favorite character. He's pretty good at trying to repeat what we ask him to, except for when we ask him to say "please" which, for whatever reason, incites him to scream and cry. He also does goofy baby talk that sounds like he's saying "Oye oye oye oye oye" and speaks this into his toy cell phone, which makes us wonder if that is what we sound like to him when we're on the phone. Not a lot of German words come from Dylan's mouth yet, but then again, not a lot of German words come from our mouths either, although we're making improvements.

He can be pretty sneaky, and this past weekend Dylan learned how to play "Trick the Babysitter" to get her to let him stay up past his bedtime while Bryan and I were at a Christmas party. We were only a few blocks away, so she called for help and I came home to get him in bed then left again to go back to the party. 

Dylan spends a lot of his time throwing a ball against the wall and trying to catch it.  He's getting pretty good and it and this activity gives us a nice break from chasing him around.  Bryan brought him to the gym a few days ago to play with the big basketballs and we're pretty sure Dylan was in heaven, so we plan to bring him back more often so he can get some energy out.  Here are a few pictures of him after one of Bryan's recent basketball games.

Dylan also has a sweet tooth and really loves the Christmas cookies that I made. Last year he was too little to have one, but this year "cookie" is quickly becoming one of his favorite words. I video taped him eating his very first Christmas cookie, which was so cute until the end when he realized I was only going to give him one cookie and not however many he wanted.

It's Just Not That Interesting

I figured when we moved over here that there would be so much to blog about and topics would be very easy to write and they would be really interesting.   What I found out in reality is that what I am doing each day is not that interesting.   Want some samples?  No?  Here are some anyway. 

1.   I spend a lot of time in my car.  While getting some good me time is nice, it doesn’t really deserve any blog posts.   I currently make 3-4 trips to Münster from Borken each week.  Each way takes about 60 minutes without traffic or snow/ice/rain.   

Though I have gotten good at understanding the traffic and weather on the radio spoken in German from these long trips, I am at the point where I will seriously consider driving into a ditch if I hear C-Lo’s ‘Forget You’ one more time. 

2.   I love school/research.   I still have trouble believing this.  After all, I was the basketball player that could barely stay academically eligible to play after my first semester of college.  The only reason I knew how to get to the library was because I once followed a hot girl there.  Me: “So this is the library.  Hmmm.  Where was I originally going?”  

My University of Muenster Web Profile

Unless, you want to hear an entire post on momentum strategy, asset allocation, or exponential growth bias projects, I will keep them off of this blog (but hopefully into the academic community). 

3.   The basketball club posts basketball news and information for those who are interested on their website.  Okay, for our American friends (both of you), these posts don’t really translate to English that well.  One of the headlines translated into "The Fruit Hangs High for Borken."  Is that a good thing or a bad thing? 

When all else fails, you can look at the bottom of the article and count how many total points each player scored and compare that number to the score in the article to see if we won.  That’s how I did it for a long time. 

Okay, maybe I could do better writing about basketball.  Maybe.  

Here's an example:

We won 84:66 for this game.  You can confirm by adding the points together. 

 RC bark Hoxfeld: Dunker (8), Dzaferagic (5), Demes (14), Foltice (30), Bosse (14), Holt

(5), Fechtner (2), Gruczyk (2) and Dohler (4)

The team is currently 5-5 heading into Christmas break.  We have a chance to make a run the second half of the season.  I am looking forward to seeing what happens in the New Year.  
 

Hopefully, some more interesting topics will come out over the Christmas season and into the New Year.  We will keep you posted.