our new arrival
To make up for having been so lazy about posting lately, I am now posting two days in a row.
Since our old washing machine was beginning to alarm us, creeping across the kitchen floor and sounding like an increasingly bigger jet every time we ran it, as well as turning our light-colored clothes a uniform shade of rust, Henrike has been on the lookout for a new machine. Tonight her mom and the boyfriend of the mom brought one over. It is called Baby Nova. (You should, of course, know better than to think that I am the type of person who would name a washing machine. And Henrike is also cooler than that. It says Baby Nova on it.)
One of the great things about German is that, due to the fact that all nouns are gendered, when you talk about an inanimate object you refer to it as "he" or "she" or "it". Machines are female. So all evening we've been saying things like, "I'm so glad we have a new washing machine. She's so little and cute, and she won't turn the clothes rusty..."
Well, it's amusing to me anyway.
Since I'm mentioning household additions, I might as well show you my new couch too:
I found it on eBay, and planned to go the lady's house and pick up the couch with a taxi, because Lindsay picked up a couch with a taxi and it was really easy. But I called a lot of taxi services, and talked to a lot of rude phone-mumblers, none of whom wanted to send me a taxi for my couch. It's not even a very big couch. So I went home and called some more rude people the next day, and still no one would bring me my couch. So then I called the lady back and said I was sorry but I didn't think I'd be able to pick up the couch. She said, "Oh...well, I guess I could just bring it over in my car."
I decided not to ask why she hadn't offered that in the first place, when I was standing on her front porch with the yellow pages in one hand and my cell phone in the other.
Anyway. Another Fulbright TA named James was here visiting Berlin this week, staying with me, so he helped carry the couch up the stairs and then got to sleep on it. (It folds out.) Despite the crazy color scheme (I don't know why, but all little fold-out couches like this are designed to match nothing), James approved of the couch's comfort factor, so now I can host lots of overnight guests in '80s color collage style. Well...one at a time, that is.
Hmm. It appears stories about couches are less than interesting. I even got bored halfway through typing it.
I'll try to do better from now on.
In other, non-household item-related (that's a hard phrase to hyphenate correctly) news, I've been taking a ballet class through the Volkshochschule ("people's high school," sort of like a low-level, cheaper community college) in my district. It's been great so far, though I'm definitely feeling the effect of not having taken more than a dozen or so real classes in the last four years. The teacher is a man from Venezuela, and the other students are three women older than me (one 40ish, two more 30-somethings) and one girl still in high school who's never taken any dance in her life. The high school girl actually hasn't been there this week, so the teacher's making the classes harder, which is okay so far, though I'm glad she was there the first week so I could ease into it a bit. I had trouble walking for a couple days as it was.
Now I'm going to go put the laundry I've been saving up into our cute new machine.
P.S. I've realized that very few of my pictures are of people. For instance, I've managed to show you my washing machine and couch, but still haven't showed you what Henrike looks like. I'll try to remedy that. No promises, though.
Since our old washing machine was beginning to alarm us, creeping across the kitchen floor and sounding like an increasingly bigger jet every time we ran it, as well as turning our light-colored clothes a uniform shade of rust, Henrike has been on the lookout for a new machine. Tonight her mom and the boyfriend of the mom brought one over. It is called Baby Nova. (You should, of course, know better than to think that I am the type of person who would name a washing machine. And Henrike is also cooler than that. It says Baby Nova on it.)
One of the great things about German is that, due to the fact that all nouns are gendered, when you talk about an inanimate object you refer to it as "he" or "she" or "it". Machines are female. So all evening we've been saying things like, "I'm so glad we have a new washing machine. She's so little and cute, and she won't turn the clothes rusty..."
Well, it's amusing to me anyway.
Since I'm mentioning household additions, I might as well show you my new couch too:
I found it on eBay, and planned to go the lady's house and pick up the couch with a taxi, because Lindsay picked up a couch with a taxi and it was really easy. But I called a lot of taxi services, and talked to a lot of rude phone-mumblers, none of whom wanted to send me a taxi for my couch. It's not even a very big couch. So I went home and called some more rude people the next day, and still no one would bring me my couch. So then I called the lady back and said I was sorry but I didn't think I'd be able to pick up the couch. She said, "Oh...well, I guess I could just bring it over in my car."
I decided not to ask why she hadn't offered that in the first place, when I was standing on her front porch with the yellow pages in one hand and my cell phone in the other.
Anyway. Another Fulbright TA named James was here visiting Berlin this week, staying with me, so he helped carry the couch up the stairs and then got to sleep on it. (It folds out.) Despite the crazy color scheme (I don't know why, but all little fold-out couches like this are designed to match nothing), James approved of the couch's comfort factor, so now I can host lots of overnight guests in '80s color collage style. Well...one at a time, that is.
Hmm. It appears stories about couches are less than interesting. I even got bored halfway through typing it.
I'll try to do better from now on.
In other, non-household item-related (that's a hard phrase to hyphenate correctly) news, I've been taking a ballet class through the Volkshochschule ("people's high school," sort of like a low-level, cheaper community college) in my district. It's been great so far, though I'm definitely feeling the effect of not having taken more than a dozen or so real classes in the last four years. The teacher is a man from Venezuela, and the other students are three women older than me (one 40ish, two more 30-somethings) and one girl still in high school who's never taken any dance in her life. The high school girl actually hasn't been there this week, so the teacher's making the classes harder, which is okay so far, though I'm glad she was there the first week so I could ease into it a bit. I had trouble walking for a couple days as it was.
Now I'm going to go put the laundry I've been saving up into our cute new machine.
P.S. I've realized that very few of my pictures are of people. For instance, I've managed to show you my washing machine and couch, but still haven't showed you what Henrike looks like. I'll try to remedy that. No promises, though.
