Well, to no one's surprise, Tanner needs braces. We basically had two choices for fixing his mouth: 1) pull a bunch of his baby teeth, then wait for his permanent teeth to grow in, then pull those, and then get him braces, or 2) get him braces. We're opting for #2. It starts in a few weeks. The orthodontist is confident that we can be done before we move back to the U.S., which is at least two years from now. (I've now officially extended our stay to a third year, which was always the plan anyway.)
On a completely unrelated note, think back to the blog I wrote back in November about elderly Swiss women berating me for not dressing sufficiently warmly when I went out to exercise. One woman said something to me that ended in kalt, which is German for "cold." I tried to convince her that I was heiss, which is "hot." She reacted somewhat oddly.
Turns out that rather than telling her that I was hot, I may have been telling her that I was, ummmmm, shall we say, frisky. (There's another word I could use that starts with "h," but since Mom reads the blog, I won't use that word.) As I'm learning more German, I found out that there's this really goofy quirk in German about how you describe your body temperature.
In English, if you're sick, you say, "I am sick." If you're hot, you say, "I am hot." (Stick with me here. I do have a point.) In German, if you're sick you say, "Ich bin krank," which means, not surprisingly, "I am sick." However, if you're hot, you say "Mir ist heiss," which literally translates to, "Me is hot." I have no idea why, and neither do our German friends. That's just how it is. If you say what seems logical, namely, "Ich bin heiss," then what you're actually saying, to put it politely, is, "I am frisky." That may explain the strange reaction I got from the nice old lady when I tried to tell her that I was hot. (I thought it was a little weird that she gave me her phone number.)
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2 comments:
Now I have to clean off my monitor... I spit my drink out (I was laughing so hard).
I love that we can finally keep track of you!☺
Funny! You could have had a date for that evening...oh well! Spanish is the same way. If you say 'Soy caliente' (I'm hot) well...the Spanish would say that you think quite highly of yourself. Instead you must say, 'tengo calor' which translates to 'I have heat'! Crazy huh!
On the braces note, tell Tanner that Tyler is also getting braces in a few weeks and it sounds like for exactly the same reason! I about choked when they gave us the bill! How much are braces in Swiss Francs?
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