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busy weekend
Oct. 14th, 2007 10:20 pmIt's been one of those weekends where you're just incredibly busy and have to make lists to remind yourself to do things like brush your teeth. Yesterday we decided we were just going to go somewhere with our family, so we went to Bayreuth. More on that in a later post because I want to share some pictures of it. But we walked all day and then thanks to the weekend train schedule it took us four hours to get home (for a just-over-an-hour trip).
Then today I had to go to Regensburg because their congregation was having a yearly conference, and I'm one of the area youth leaders (LDS translation: I'm in the young women stake presidency). The drive was beautiful! Regensburg sits on the Danube and is a very lovely city. There is an American military unit in the area and the church service was in German and English. The class I was supposed to teach was a 50-50 split. I brought my girls along and we rode with a friend, and since my kids were in a public arena, their language of choice was German. They went into the children's class with some other kids they know, and afterwards one of the teachers (American) asked if my kids understood much English because they translated the class for them. And my (very American) daughter never said a word, just went right along with the whole thing. Then someone complimented me on how good my English was. Well, I hope so, I've been speaking it since birth. :)
Then this afternoon once I got home was a choir practice and we got Christmas music! Yay! So far we have an arrangement of Tochter Zion (a German poem set to music by Handel; a British and a Nigerian woman both said they knew the music as a hymn, but I'm pretty sure the text is not a translation of the German because I've looked; it's a pretty common Christmas song in German, though). The other song might be In Dulci Jubilo, and I really hope it is. Macaronic songs are just cool, especially since living the English-German split as our family does, my mind functions in macaronic patterns.
Anyway, I wish I could describe what it's like to drive across the German countryside with wide green fields and sudden plunging valleys and hills dotted with firs and pines and stripy zebra birches, and golden leaves strewn across the road. Germany is really, really beautiful, and I'm always particularly struck by this whenever I'm on a trip, whether to Bayreuth or Regensburg or wherever else it is.
Then today I had to go to Regensburg because their congregation was having a yearly conference, and I'm one of the area youth leaders (LDS translation: I'm in the young women stake presidency). The drive was beautiful! Regensburg sits on the Danube and is a very lovely city. There is an American military unit in the area and the church service was in German and English. The class I was supposed to teach was a 50-50 split. I brought my girls along and we rode with a friend, and since my kids were in a public arena, their language of choice was German. They went into the children's class with some other kids they know, and afterwards one of the teachers (American) asked if my kids understood much English because they translated the class for them. And my (very American) daughter never said a word, just went right along with the whole thing. Then someone complimented me on how good my English was. Well, I hope so, I've been speaking it since birth. :)
Then this afternoon once I got home was a choir practice and we got Christmas music! Yay! So far we have an arrangement of Tochter Zion (a German poem set to music by Handel; a British and a Nigerian woman both said they knew the music as a hymn, but I'm pretty sure the text is not a translation of the German because I've looked; it's a pretty common Christmas song in German, though). The other song might be In Dulci Jubilo, and I really hope it is. Macaronic songs are just cool, especially since living the English-German split as our family does, my mind functions in macaronic patterns.
Anyway, I wish I could describe what it's like to drive across the German countryside with wide green fields and sudden plunging valleys and hills dotted with firs and pines and stripy zebra birches, and golden leaves strewn across the road. Germany is really, really beautiful, and I'm always particularly struck by this whenever I'm on a trip, whether to Bayreuth or Regensburg or wherever else it is.
