My week: August 30 ed.

This was a week for friends and for laziness. I had my tandem partner over for dinner on one evening. The next evening, I had two other friends over and they "made" me speak German most of the time. Both evenings were very enjoyable.

The rest of the week was spent in a very leisurely and lazy way. I made several after-work foraging expeditions to collect the last of the blackberries as the plants seem to be shriveling a bit now. It does seem to be the beginning of elderberry season so I've started on those too. The main problem is finding the ambition to deal with them. My freezer is packed and I haven't had motivation to make some cordials so I may have to stick them in the work freezer.

During the weekend, I took some bike rides, picked more berries, visited the Gartenschau, and wandered around downtown. I also ate dinner at Safari with my German friends and they "forced" me to speak German again, for about 75% of the time. I laughed because as I was whinging about having to speak German, my friend asked me if it was because I had a headache (this has been a truthful excuse of mine before). No, but I did tell him that it would give me a headache.

Despite that, we continued and it was good for me. I'm usually fine with involved conversations with one speaking partner, but it was a bit hard to follow with three other people and complex stories. We even started talking about behaviorism and animal training techniques because S is a psychologist. I did have to switch to English at that point since I don't know those words.

S and I started talking about the language around Stuttgart, which is Schwaben, which is where she's from. I told her the story of how I went to the garden party in a Stuttgart and this guy had such a strong accent. However, he had also enjoyed quite a few beers so I couldn't tell if he was drunk, Schwäbisch, or both! She thought that was funny.

It was a peaceful and relaxing week. Heck, it was a "slow living" kind of week where I didn't do much rushing around, other than getting the food and house in order to have friends over. I'm glad to have this time because September will herald another 9 months of  a packed schedule as German classes resume.