My week: March 19 ed.

This week was stressful, friend-filled, warm fuzzy-filled, with another dose of stressfulness.

The week before, a German lady hit and totalled my car. She was the one who almost immediately asked where I learned to speak such good German. Looking back, I can admit how absurd it was that this was about the second thing she said to me. We then had some conversations about how we were like a tv program for the obnoxiously nosy bystanders as we waited for the police. One nutty woman even came nearer for a better look at the crumpled cars then walked away, smirking. Oh, for Pete's sake!

Anyway, I spent much of my week dealing with the car issues but on top of that my calendar was full. I felt a bit frazzled but not full-out stressed (believe me, I've been way more stressed than this before and made it through everything). Despite not feeling that mentally stressed, I couldn't sleep well; I was getting about 5 hours a night and felt as if I was going to get sick. I was thankful to catch up with sleep on the weekend, which seemed to reset everything.

I met with my tandem partner and she had put together more practice activities for the telc B2 test. Can I just say that the test's speaking components are so boring? I am getting sick of reading an article about a touchy topic and then explaining my opinion about it. I'm fine with conversations in German but I don't enjoy making a presentation. Despite this, I do greatly appreciate that my friend is willing to help me practice with these exercises because they must be boring for her, too, and it's a great help to prepare for the exam.

In addition to my other activities, I decided to join a club in the German community. It's all German speaking, all the time. Actually, the leader did have a side conversation with me and very kindly offered to speak English. I politely declined, since it's a German club, and feel that it's only right to speak German there (if I weren't fluent enough to grasp mostly everything going on, I wouldn't have joined). Man, if I had two hours or more of speaking full-on German a day, I'd be up to C2 reasonably fast.

I mentioned a Really Big Idea I had and some members were interested. It's an idea developed by a community group in Australia and it helps protect the environment, reduces waste, saves money, and unites the community. Obviously it's right up my alley and the other women were very interested, too. I'd like to work on the behind-the-scenes planning and have the other club members be the official face of the program because I don't really want to be on tv again after my five minutes of fame. Plus, I think I've embarrassed myself enough by speaking halting German in front of the whole (local tv-viewing) world. I've already been thinking about other community groups we could include, as well as stores and sponsors. Press your thumbs for me that we can pull this off :)

German class also met as usual, but I had such a hard time concentrating because I was stressed about the car. I had taken some time off to go car shopping and visited about ten car dealers. They were polite and helpful but it's not something I enjoy.

I met with another club and participated in some of their activities. I'm hoping to pull them into the Really Big Idea too as it fits their mission well.

During the weekend, I looked at cars some more but had already mostly decided on a particular one so was able to back off the search.

Another group was offering a cooking class so I joined that and enjoyed myself. The funny thing was that I didn't eat any of the main dishes that we had cooked. I really don't care for fish, and that was in most of the dishes. I was happy to learn about another cuisine (even if it doesn't appeal to me personally :) and destress with some company and cooking so I didn't mind only being able to eat mashed potatoes and a carrot salad. The organizer was sweet; when he found out that I didn't eat most of the stuff we were making, he was worried that I wouldn't have anything and wanted to know what he could do. I told him I'd have no problems eating the potatoes and salad and not to worry.

Some friends and I met on Sunday to wander around downtown Kaiserslautern for the advertising association's event "Kaiserslautern in Bloom" (KL blueht auf). Marching bands assaulted the city with their raucous, fun-loving tunes and the city was awash with people. My friends W and M from an hour away made a quick appearance and we shared some good laughs (and our elbow sidehugs). Plus, A and I finally caught up. Normally we hang out quite a bit but we've both been busy and/or traveling. After the downtown events, I invited her over for homemade pizza. We chatted and hung with Moo, a peaceful end to a stressful week.