You and a Friend Have Won an All-expenses-paid Trip to...Bucharest!

Sometimes in life you go a whole month where nothing of note occurs and then your boss announces she's sending you to Romania. Not forever; just for a few days, but read up on early language acquisition reseach and get packing because you're leaving in two weeks. Though the trip does sound interesting, I'm not sure how much of Bucharest I'll really be seeing, since I'll be spending much of my time in a conference about child development. But if the university is paying to send me to a foreign country where I don't even know what the currency is, who am I to argue?

But it's true that the days leading up to this particular announcement were not especially eventful. A new director of marketing joined the zoo team, a tall man from West Germany who wears thin-rimmed glasses. One day, when I knew him by sight but had not been formally introduced, he ambushed me by popping out from behind foliage while I was returning the bearded dragon to his enclosure after a presentation. (Apparently, the marketing director had been waiting for the gardener and an expensive tree donated by a patron, not just lurking in the bushes.)

"Suzanne!" he began; it was an odd way to begin because we had never met and therefore had never gone through the very German process of jointly deciding whether it was acceptable to use forenames. "I hear you are from the Seattle area." He explained that after studying marketing, he spent a year with a host family in Federal Way. "I KNOW WHERE THAT IS!" I practically shouted. "I'm from Burien!" "I KNOW WHERE THAT IS!" he practically shouted back. My German became broken and frantic as I excitedly urged him to tell me more about it. He knew the Seatac mall, he knew Gig Harbor, he knew the Point Defiance Zoo! It was home.

He spoke entirely in German, although Shannon told me his English was quite good and obviously at some point it had been good enough for him to live in the U.S. The only Germans I have found who are comfortable speaking to me in English are the linguists; all the others, no matter what their level of training, hesitate. There is one trainee who switched from studying English at the university to studying zookeeping (I would say that was odd, but then, so is switching from being a middle school teacher to a zookeeper.) and she is the only person at the zoo to speak readily with me.

But I discovered she is not the only one who actually speaks English. While I was talking about the possibility of going to a movie, I invited another trainee to come along, and warned, "this one's in English." He replied confidently, "Oh, my English is certainly good enough to watch movies. I got A's in English from 1st grade until 12th" I was surprised. He could watch a Tarantino film in English and yet never spoke a word beyond "Hi" in English to me? But it was true. Similarly, another trainee said to me one day, "That's enough" in English and when I praised him "Hey, good English!" he confessed he'd lived in Australia for ten months. No one except those in their twenties had so much English in school, but it seems the German mentality of avoiding mistakes at all costs prevents even those who studied for years from speaking.

In other news, Octoberfest is in full swing here (yeah, it starts in September; howevert no one has been able to explain why), but mostly it's a Bavarian festival, so up here in east central Germany, we don't sport drindels or lederhosen. We do erect occasional booths and tiny surprise stages around the city center, and I can't find any rhyme or reason to them. On Sunday I was taking a walk along the river when I stumbled upon a pretty sizable flea market and once while walking home from German class, my usual route was barricaded by what appeared to be a celebration of the region's different wineries. I can't say if these types of things are Octoberfest related, or just coincidental. Germans seem to be constantly celebrating something, which is a pretty cheerful way to go about things really.

As part of my preparations for leaving the country, I had to paint my balcony and one room in the apartment. When I signed the lease for the apartment, I was taking over for someone who had already painted it, but when I give it back (unless I sign it over to yet another person) I have to return it to the rental agency completely white. This would not have been an issue if the previous renter had not used vibrant mustard yellow and dark velvet brown paint. It would also have been an easier task for me if I had the proper equipment for such an endeavor. Or if I were smarter. That would have helped too.

I began by covering half the balcony with newspaper because I didn't have a dropcloth, or enough newspaper to cover the whole thing. I also didn't have a paint tray, which meant I had to dunk the roller into the paint bucket directly. I also only had a roller with a six inch handle to paint walls and a ceiling that are eight feet high. Eventually I was standing on a cabinet that happened to be the only piece of furniture I could move onto the balcony without assistance and that was tall enough for me to reach the ceiling, and I was using a contraption I had rigged by duct taping the short roller onto a long pole. Fortunately I didn't plummet four stories down onto the neighbors' hedges. (But if I had, at least I would have been able to get affordable medical care!) Don't paint your balcony in this manner. I industriously applied three coats of paint, all the while marveling at the audacity of the yellow and brown paint. How could they possibly still be showing through? Frustrated and exhausted, I began chatting with a friend online who helpfully pointed out that one should stir paint before using it. Damn.

The only other events of note are that I ate a fighting chicken's egg for breakfast one day, and an elephant painted me a picture.