Gut sprechen

I've been noticing the past few days that German is coming more easily to me. I still feel like I have to agonize over every single sentence, but when I talk, it just comes out. It's not totally natural, but it's a lot better. Lately I've been having this feeling where, after I say something, I'll think, did I really say that? It will be some complex sentence that just a little while ago I really struggled with, but without me even thinking, it came out of my mouth the right way. I feel like this happened all of a sudden, but I guess that's probably not true. Oh well, it's definitely nice! It makes me feel like I'm actually making some progress, since for a long time I was really frustrated about not getting much better. I've been complimented a few times on my German, although I can never really believe it because to me I feel like I'm so bad at it. But the thing that really made me feel better was when Tabea, one of the youth group girls, said that my German is better than either Joy's or Vivien's (two of the previous aupairs) was when they'd been here the same amount of time as I've been. Well, even if I don't feel like I'm doing well with it, at least I'm tricking everyone else!

Monday I had my second cooking class. It was kind of difficult because there were a lot of words I didn't understand, mostly the ingredients. I thought about bringing my German-English dictionary, but then decided it was a silly idea. Next time I am definitely bringing it! Anyway, we made a few different soups, and the one I made with my partner was a vegetable soup, and it ended up being really really good. That is definitely something I'll be making again.

To me, cooking class is a little bit like chemistry lab--I always mess up little things because I'm too impatient to read all of the directions or just because I'm inept at measuring. It's frustrating, but I guess that's how it goes. The soup turned out well, but I think that had more to do with my partner than with me (just like chem lab).

Yesterday...not much happened. Went to the playground with Johanna and she played on the slide for a while. She fell about 15 times but as soon as she stood up was fine; then of course when we got home, she discovered a tiny, microscopic, practically invisible dot of a cut on her wrist and started getting worked up. Of course as soon as I put a bandaid on it she was fine, but it was so cute--she kept saying, "I can't bend my wrist otherwise I'll hurt my cut." Oh, and another adorable thing she did recently: I was putting her and Domink to bed and I saw her doll sitting in the shower. I said, "Your doll is in the shower! Do you want to get her out and have her with you in bed?" And she said, "No, the doll is at her swimming class!" Johanna has been dying to go to swimming class ever since Dominik started, when he was four. She's already excited to go next year when she's four.

And a cute Dominik thing, but first a little background. OK, really the only background is that his favorite food is noodles with tomato sauce. The other day he said, "Know what would be great? If we took all of the windows out of the house, filled it up with tomato sauce, put some noodles in, and then I could swim through it! Naked!"

I think that's a good note to end this on.