Life abroad sometimes feels like a big game of Catch Phrase or Taboo. You know, those games where you have to describe a word without actually saying the word. People can get pretty creative.
 |
| Often the emoji combos are harder for me to understand than the actual German. |
Somewhat ironically, the most Catch Phrase-y venue is my English class. The teacher is always describing a specific word for me to guess. It's a little tricky sometimes because he's thinking British and I'm thinking American. (On a side note, we're currently learning about the American Dream-- with Arnold Schwarzenegger as the prime example! I found that pretty interesting...) We were studying the Constitution and Declaration of Independence earlier and I was asked to give a native speaker's definition of certain words. All I'm saying is, thank goodness for SAT and IB English vocabulary practice the past two years!
One place where it's not so hard to guess what is being said is on my soccer team. When the coaches keep yelling, "Schieben! Schieben! Schieben!" you catch on pretty quickly and realize, oh, maybe I should be sliding over to cover the goal. And some things simply don't need words, like when one of our coaches makes the circle-spinny motion with his finger we run. And keep running. And run and run and run.
 |
| My new babies! |
Finally, in music class, we were given three poems to ponder and turn into a cappella pieces. One of them was "The Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll. That doesn't even make sense in English! Everyone found the whole thing pretty silly and ridiculous, which I think was what our teacher was going for. Here was my favorite poem we were given:
Das große Lalulā
by Christian Morgenstern
Kroklokwafzi? Semememi!
Seiokrontro- prafriplo:
Bifzi, bafzi; hulalemi:
quasti bast bo...
Lalu lalu lalu lalu la!
The other kids were just as confused as I was, which is a rare occurrence In German class we're reading Kabale und Liebe by Schiller. Reading Mr. Morgenstern's poem felt uncannily like reading Kabale und Liebe. As for the Catch Phrase thing, my game night buddies in Salem had better be ready for me to be at the top of my game next summer! I'm getting plenty of practice.