der Deutschzircle

Saturday, I was invited over to my German teacher's house to join her informal German speaking group. Apparently, a few years ago, these older students, couples, finished speedy German I, but there weren't enough people to start a Speedy German II class, so the teacher simply invited everyone over to her house once every few weeks to practice.

I'd given her a copy of my German contract to look over for me, and she was very interested in what she called "Burodeustsch" (stilted, beaurocratic legalese German). It was a very interesting group, an Indian couple whose aviator Ray-Ban wearing husband is actually a Navy pilot, an older guy who had been speaking the language for awhile, and a talkative and slightly eccentric fourth guy. The Indian couple had an infant with them and the rest of us took turns holder her while they cooked some good Indian fried potato pancake things and Chinese dumplings.

Tee und Koffee were brought out and we ate and talked outside in the beautiful day at my teacher's patio table. Fifteen lost parakeets flitted in the trees overhead. I introduced myself, and people asked me questions and answered my teacher's questions almost entirely in German, and she'd interrupt to clarify an expression or word.

The contract has probably some of the best terms I'm going to see in awhile. Nationalized health insurance and social services will be paid for by the company. 24 days of paid vacation, not including the many national holidays (the catch of course, is that technically, I don't have any paid days off for the first six months, but it sounds like we'll sit down and renegotiate after three).

Anyway, it was an interesting and pleasant way to pass a few hours.

Also this weekend, I helped mom hang some artwork and spent a lot of time working on the presentation for the pitch to the city of Phoenix. For what we need here, I've set the whole thing up in Google Docs as a presentation which is useful for R to jump in and move stuff around so she doesn't need to call me to ask me to move some slides around or take out a word or two.