Originally written 09July08

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I just have to say. I’m loving it here in Germany.

It’s been kind of funny. As most of you know, I’ve been studying German for quite some time now. I’m far from fluent, but I know enough to get around and to have somewhat decent conversations.

I’m traveling with my friend, Becky. She doesn’t know any German so I’ve been having to do most of the work as far as that goes. It’s really funny though, here I am, a woman of Latin ancestry traveling with a woman of white-European ancestry. Who would you think (if you saw us on the street) would be the one who could speak some German? haha.

A couple of times now, we’ve had people come up to us and start talking to Becky, only to be surprised when she just points at me and I start to reply in German. haha.

Let’s see. It’s happened about 3 or 4 times now. Once when we were sitting in the park here in Münster. An older woman came up to Becky and asked for the time. Another time was yesterday, we were walking to the park and a woman standing in front of us at the crosswalk turned around, looked at me, opened her mouth to say something, thought better of it and turned to Becky to ask her for directions. haha. That was soo funny to me. And this morning. We were sitting in our hostel having breakfast, this guy sits down and starts talking to me in German (Becky was making toast). So were were talking a bit about why we were here and all that. Meanwhile, Becky sits next to me and as we’re talking, the guy keeps glancing at Becky, obviously expecting her to say something. So he finally asks me where we’re from, and I told him the US. He laughs and says he thought we were German and compliments me on my German. Luckily he knew English so Becky could join our conversation. :]

So if you’re looking for a moral… here’s the one Becky and I came up with. If you’re Caucasian, traveling with a Hispanic friend who speaks German, you had better know some of the language too. :ppp