It’s hard to believe that Joe is getting ready for the first day of his last semester at UniFreiburg. My regular readers may have the perception that the last 2.75 years has been nothing but adventure and enjoyment, travel and discovery. They have been all those things, for sure. However, what I don’t document are the hours that Joe spends at his “desk” (we don’t eat at the dining room table anymore), the nights at the library that slowly turn to morning, or the insanity that comes from deciphering/creating German words that are longer than an entire English sentence.

Equal Opportunity Commissioner

As a nod to his accomplishments, I’ve logged the following:

– 12 Language classes
– 12 University classes
– 11 written exams
– 10 oral exams
– 11 Power Point presentations
– 8 ten page essays
– 6 twenty-five page “Hausarbeit” research reports

However, this is not the end. It is only the beginning of the end. There is still much to do:

– 5 University classes
– 1 “Masterarbeit”, officially titled: Justifying International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) involvement in Afghanistan: a comparative analysis of the strategic cultures of Germany and the United States
– 1 Mündliche Prüfung (oral exam) encompassing everything since the beginning of his studies.

It is really unbelievable to reflect on what Joe has accomplished in a language that he didn’t know a single word of three years ago.  There has been stress and sacrifices, but we wouldn’t trade any of it. Our ability to speak German is the tangible and audible evidence of what has been learned, but it is dwarfed in comparison to what we have learned as citizens of this planet, as Americans, and as a married couple.

Ich erhebe mein Glas auf dich, Schatz und ich bin unglaublich stolz auf dich. Du hast schon so viel geschafft und ich weiß, dass du deine Ziele noch erreichen wirst. Ich habe jeden Tag mit dir genossen und du hast mein Leben verändert…nochmals. Ich liebe dich…at least we know how to say that!

Remember Christine? My 70 year old, judgmental, border-line racist Tandem Partner? No? Refresh yourself here.

Well, she is still around! I’ve learned a lot through our 2.5 years together: I’ve learned to swiftly change the subject when she doesn’t approve of my personal choices, I’ve mastered the art of the awkward silence when she shares her opinions on race, and I’ve learned to turn away when she decides to change from pants to a skirt in the middle of a public place (without even doing the pull-the-skirt-on-first-and-then-remove-the-pants move).

To be totally fair, Christine seems to be a really awesome grandmother. She picks her grandson up from school every Friday for “Omatag” (Grandma Day). There is always something interesting planned: bonfire and ghost stories in the Black Forest, scavenger hunts with buried treasures at the end, making forts out of old cardboard boxes rummaged from the grocery store, for example. I know all this because I ask about “Omatag” all the time. It keeps her rolling on a safe topic for quite a while!

So, every year Christine and her grandson go into the Black Forest to “save frogs”. There is a large pond, which the frogs come to when they are ready to spawn. However, a small problem exists: between their normal habitat and the pond there is a road that must be crossed…twice! A fence along both sides of the road prevents (some of) the frogs from becoming road kill during their journey. After dark, people go into the forest and either carry the frogs across the street to the pond, or back to their forest home.

This year Christine invited me to help her and her grandson “save” some frogs! When I arrived at the house, all ready to go, it was announced that the grandson wasn’t going to accompany us because he didn’t finish his homework. Ironically, the homework was about tadpoles. I’m not even kidding. I saw the homework myself because I made the mistake of answering in the affirmative when the mom asked me if I was good in biology. After a few very awkward moments when I couldn’t figure out what the german word for ‘tadpole’ was, the grandson finally said (in German with a typical 10-year old “ummm….duuhhh” tone), “You know, frog babies!”

So, Christine and I headed out alone to see what kind of croakers we could save. It is actually a really cool system. Before starting the search for amphibian damsels in despair, you have to stop at an old farmhouse where you pick up buckets, reflective vests, and data sheets. Data is recorded every night regarding the number, gender, and direction of travel of each frog.

This is the instructional sign at the farm house, which I love because it is so “german”:

Dear Amphibian Collectors

Here we go!

Pond where all the “action” takes place!

Frog-fences on both sides of the road.

There were about half a dozen other Germans searching for frogs tonight. They were all a buzz about the night prior, during which they were hard at work from dusk until after midnight. An entire day of rain had resulted in 988 frogs being saved last night! I’m not even exaggerating here…I saw the data sheets to prove it! Unfortunately, there was also evidence all over the street of the unfortunate ones who were too impatient to wait for safe travel via bucket.

Honestly, I don’t even know how I got into this. I don’t even like frogs. Actually, I know exactly how: Christine never takes no for an answer.

Here was our first find:

This guy was a bit ornery and quite chatty:

After pacing the fence-line four times, we decided to walk our slimy friends to safety and release them to live another day. I hope Christine’s grandson was more successful with his homework than we were as Amphibian Collectors!

Total number of frogs saved: 3
I prefer to think of the evening in a more optimistic light.
Total number of tadpoles saved: 42,573

The devil has been taking up residence amid my carpal bones since November, so I decided to have him exorcised.

Layman’s terms: Too much time with Tony Horton and Shaun T gave me a cherry-sized cyst in my wrist that I decided to have surgically removed. Gross, I know.

On some occasions, I ask Joe to accompany me to appointments and act as a second pair of ears and help translate, when needed. Such was the case when I met with the hand surgeon. This turned out to be superfluous because the doc walked in and asked (in English), “What language should be speak today?” Well…English of course!! In my book, there is no need to be a language-hero when it comes to having my bones and ligaments exposed to the light of day.

I wish I could say the rest of my surgical experience in Germany continued so smoothly. But then we would be left with a boring story. Where’s the fun in that?

Feeling guilty that I was consuming Joe’s paper-writing time, I opted to attend my appointment with the anesthesiologist alone. Here is where I would decide whether to receive general anesthesia or have a local anesthesia injected with a very large needle “somewhere between the neck and clavicle, with ultrasound guidance.” Yikes! To top it off, the anesthesiologist wouldn’t budge with the German. I opted for the general and walking home after the appointment, I actually felt a sense of accomplishment having explained my entire medical/surgical history in my second language. However, I wasn’t totally confident that I had checked the correct box for, “please wake me up when you are finished.” Since I am awake and coherent enough to write this, I guess I chose correctly. Yay me!

Come surgery day, the nurses wouldn’t let Joe past the waiting room, so I had to go it alone. Everything was fine until I was lying down in the operating room and the anesthesiologist arrived. She told me I was in the “schönsten” (most beautiful) operating room and asked me where I was from. Then, she stood over the table in that suspicious type of anesthesiologist I’m-doing-something-secret-that-I-don’t-want-you-to-know-about way and told me to dream about going to Chicago. My response: “Chicago has too much snow. I would rather…”. In my head I told her something about going to the Maldives instead. In reality, I have no idea what came out of my mouth. I actually hope I was asleep before I got to the Maldives part. Talking about islands in German requires ridiculous contortions of prepositions and cases, even when totally conscious and coherent. I’m sure whatever did (or would have) come out of my mouth while halfway to dreamland was a grammatical train wreck!

When I came to and realized where I was, I looked down and saw that my hand was all wrapped up. When the nurse came around, I was still really confused, so I asked her (in German) if we were finished. Apparently that came out accurately because she chuckled and told me that we were, indeed, quite finished. Then, I told her that I had a lot of pain on my forehead. She took off my hair net, which did not relieve the pain.

I spent the next 90 minutes “getting right with the world” and then walked myself out to Joe, who was reading in the waiting room. I was welcomed with, “What the f*#k?” I’m not kidding here. That is exactly what he said, then he spit on his thumb to wipe the blood from my forehead, which stung like hell. I love you too, darling.

At home, I looked in the mirror to find a lovely raspberry right in the middle of my forehead. The doctor had no explanation* when he called to check on me that evening. The next day I found another behind my ear.

They strapped you to the table. They used the rope from gym class to tie down your flailing limbs. They were bored and decided to have some fun while you were sleeping. These were all ideas from family members regarding my mysterious forehead malady. Thanks all, love you too.

My hypothesis: sometime during that original appointment, I inadvertently told the anesthesiologist, in German, that I wanted as many scars on my skin as possible to mark this momentous occasion. Whoops! I guess I missed the “instructions for becoming unconscious” lesson during language training!

*Thanks to a friend who is a PACU nurse, the two rug-burns on my head were from the electrodes used to measure my level of sedation. Phew! No gym-class ropes involved!

March 26^th update: My dexterity is slowly returning and the face-raspberries are gone! It only took Liv a few days to be tired of our quality time on the couch.