Each year our librarian creates a huge advent calendar in the library. She photoshops fun Christmas pictures with the faces of staff and students. It’s my favorite VCS tradition. Here’s what she did to us this year:
Merry Christmas!
Apparently there was an advertisement in the paper this weekend to sell something, and as luck would have it, they posted the wrong number – our number. The truth is that our German is limited mostly to ordering things at a restaurant and telling people we’re sorry that our German is bad. This makes it more than a little challenging to explain to people over the phone that they have the wrong number due to a printing error. In an effort to come up with a good sentence to use for the dozens of phone calls I’m getting today, I went to Leo and tried to look up the word for advertisement. This is what I found:
Below this there were 49 more phrases and words to help you narrow it down. I found this which got me a little closer to what I wanted to know:
Now from here I had to make an educated guess (well, not that educated). I decided to go with die Zeitungsannonce since I know that Zeitung is newspaper. I really have no idea if it’s the right choice.
Here’s the sentence I came up with (with a little help from Google Translate):
Sind Sie fragen nach der Zeitungsannonce?
Then I hope they keep it simple and just say, “Ja.”
Then I get to say a sentence I feel a little more confident about:
Dies ist die falsche Nummer.
Then I pray that they don’t ask me a lot of questions because even though I will probably understand the questions, I’ll be completely incapable of coming up with a coherent answer.
So, my German speaking friends, here is your chance to help me out. How bad is the question I came up with, and what should I really be saying?
Krampus has finally hit mainstream America! Well, if you consider the Colbert Report mainstream, that is. In any case it’s good to know America is being properly educated on Austrian folklore.
Check out the video below.
Skip ahead to 2:35 (about halfway through) to see the part about Krampus.
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| The Blitzkrieg on Grinchitude – Hallmark & Krampus | ||||
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I’ve been leading a Bible study on the book of Malachi with some guys from my church. Also, some friends of mine decided to start a blog of a more theological nature.
So look for this blog to continue to have cute pictures and ministry updates and the new blog to have allegedly insightful posts.
My first, and only post(so far), is about the the first chapter of Malachi.
Here’s a link: Malachi 1
One of the problems I have with Christmas shopping every year is that I find so many things that I want for me. Not exactly the point of Christmas, right? Anyway, in shopping for my very cute, very geeky husband, I came across something that I love.
Can you guess what they are?
I like the green ones.
Have you figured it out yet?
Yep! Lightsaber chopsticks! For real. I think I need the green ones because Yoda is my favorite – we kind of see eye-to-eye. Literally. I think Matt should have blue because, well, he’s my hero. 
You can get your own set here: Lightsaber Chopsticks
I’m definitely putting these on my birthday list. It’s acceptable to find gifts for myself on that holiday, right?
The fall play this year was William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I was completely blown away by the incredible job the students did on this play. I actually got to watch it twice, and I was amazed both times.
Our friend Bethany was the director this year. I think she gave the students a true life gift by teaching them how to understand Shakespeare. This is a hard task for many people, but when you consider that most of our students are learning English as their second (or third, or fourth, or…) language, this is quite an accomplishment.
The fun thing with the play was that you could see they truly understood it. Not only that, but they truly enjoyed it. How do I know? Comedic timing. It’s everything, and they had it.
Well done kids! You are amazing!
You can see A LOT of pictures here: A Midsummer Night’s Dream
