A bit of good news

Tanner's dyslexia makes some things difficult for him, particularly reading, writing, and spelling. He has some real struggles with those things, and I sometimes find myself getting discouraged as I try to help him deal with some of those challenges when he's got a tough writing assignment.

But he pulled off something great the other day, and this may hint at where his future lies. His English class assigns a series of "English challenges," things like writing a poem or a paper about something or other. A couple of the challenges are oral. The kids are required to do at least one of the oral challenges.

Tanner's never had trouble getting up in front of a group. He's given several talks in church. He gets up there with just a couple of notes and says what he wants to say. For his oral English challenge, he decided to talk about why he loves cars. Stace and I gave him a couple of pointers and sent him off to work on his speech. He scribbled down a couple of talking points, rehearsed it in his head a few times, and gave us a dry run while we were in Barcelona. It was so-so. We spent ten minutes or so giving him more suggestions and sent him off to practice some more.

He gave his speech in class on Wednesday, and it was fantastic. His teacher said it was the best speech he's heard in four years of teaching. He said that Tanner could convince someone to buy garbage and it wouldn't be until later that they'd wonder why they had bought garbage. Students from later English classes that day told Tanner that the teacher was still talking about Tanner's speech from that morning. I asked Tanner if he'd needed to use his notes during the speech, and he said that he didn't use them; he just remembered all of his points and said what he wanted to say. He loves being up there in front of the crowd and doesn't get at all rattled.

That ability can get a person pretty far in life. Maybe there's still hope for the kid.

More fun with verbs

I'm going to geek out on y'all again in this post. I continue to be fascinated by the differences in languages.

You probably don't spend most of your time thinking about verb tenses, but take a second to ponder the many and confusing verb tenses that we use in English. Here are some examples: "I go swimming." "I will go swimming." "I am going swimming." "I went swimming." "I have been swimming." "I would have gone swimming." "I would go swimming." Each of those tenses conveys a slightly different meaning, but the differences can be subtle. "I go swimming" and "I am going swimming" don't mean quite the same thing.

German, by contrast, doesn't use that many tenses. The structure of their verbs tenses is simpler, and you have to pick up the meaning from the context, not from the actual tense.

Here's an example: When we first moved here, we were talking with one of our German friends, Ruth, about a nearby swimming place. She said to Stacie, "We are going swimming there." Stacie replied, "Oh, tomorrow?" But that's not what Ruth meant. What she meant was that's where her family goes swimming; she wasn't expressing an intent to go at any particular time. It's tricky for non-native English speakers to pick up on the slight differences in how we express our verbs.

Here's the example that got me thinking about this. It illustrates a tricky translation that I see all the time here. Stace took the kids to rent their skis the other day. The website for the ski shop we use has German and English. Here's what it says in English: "Sport Vock Thalwil was founded in 1937 and is owned by Fredi Vock since 1980. Since 1994 we are specialised in ski equipment rental." In English, though, we really say this as, "Sport Vock Thalwil was founded in 1937 and has been owned by Fredi Vock since 1980. Since 1994 we have specialised in ski equipment rental."

So, next time a native German speaker says to you in English, "I am living there since 2008," you'll know why.

Barcelona, Day 3

As I mentioned yesterday, there was still more Gaudi to come on day 3. We started out at Casa Milà, but we decided to spare ourselves the expense of going inside.



On the walk to our next destination, we came across this. I can't remember what it's called, but it's not Gaudi. I think it's a Gaudi wanna be.



Here's some more real Gaudi. We decided it was worth going inside this one. This is Casa Batlló.

And what good is having a rooftop deck if you don't make it a little interesting?

When we'd finally had enough of Gaudi, we walked over to La Rambla, Barcelona's well-known street for shopping and seeing all kinds of interesting things. These guys were making huge bubbles, and Lindsey couldn't stay away, of course.

After that, we went to the Barcelona Cathedral. We didn't take pictures, but it was cool. I could spend all day hanging out in old, classic churches. (Stace and the kids aren't quite as enamored of them as I am.)

And that was it. We had to head for the airport at 5:30 the next morning. Ugh.

As you'd expect me to report, it was a good trip overall. (We did almost everything that Gretchen told us to do, which was our main goal.) The people in Barcelona were very friendly. There wasn't a lot of English, but there was enough for us to get by. Barcelona is definitely on my list of cool places to visit.

Barcelona, Day 2

Barcelona is all about the architect Antoni Gaudi, and you can't get very far in Barcelona without seeing his work. Day 2 was Gaudi day for us, although Gaudi day ended up spilling over into day 3 because you can't really get it all in one day.

But first, this guy, outside the Sagrada Familia:



And now, back to Gaudi. The Sagrada Familia is, or is going to be, a basilica unlike any other. It was started in 1882. Right now, the anticipated completion date is 2026, but when you've been working on something this long, what's the hurry?

Gaudi was either brilliant or insane. Take your pick.

After we spent a long time at the Sagrada Familia, we went to Park Güell, which is sort of Barcelona's version of New York's Central Park, except that it has all kinds of Gaudi constructions throughout. It's a popular park. Half of the population of Spain got off the bus with us at the park entrance.

One nice thing about being on your own instead of being part of a huge tour group that's spending a few hours in town while on a cruise is that you can just hang out and watch the flow of life in a new city. We spent some time doing that in this central plaza with these funky benches around the edge.

Barcelona, Day 1

And we're back. It was a fun trip. The weather was great while we were there, but it was pouring this morning when we left, so we timed it just right.

We liked Barcelona. I don't know about the rest of Spain, but Barcelona doesn't have the crazy feel of some of places we've visited in Italy, like Rome or Naples. People generally obeyed the traffic laws and didn't illegally triple park. It wasn't as clean as Switzerland, but then, most surgical instruments aren't as clean as Switzerland, so that's no surprise.

In that part of Spain, known as Catalonia, the dinner hour is still quite late, and we quickly fell into that pattern. Things really didn't start to pick up until 9:00 or so. We'd find ourselves roaming the streets of Barcelona at 9 trying to find a good place to eat. The kids would get to bed around 11 or so, and then they'd sleep until 10 the next morning.

I walked the family just about to death. Barcelona is a very walkable city, and we stayed pretty close to the heart of things, so we only took the subway or the bus a couple of times. We just walked the rest of the time.

Here's the view from our apartment, on a typically narrow street:



And let's just get the obligatory Subway picture out of the way:



On the first day, we headed for the waterfront. (The hill that you can see in the background is called Montjuic. You'll see some pictures from there later on.)



Despite our best efforts to fill our kids with a sense of wonder and appreciation for all of the world's different cultures and peoples, their favorite activity on the trip was, of course, touching the sharks at Barcelona's big aquarium.



One of the coolest things about many cities in Europe is the variety of street performers. (I always give a little money to a performer if we take a picture.)

After we'd seen enough of the fish and the jugglers, we headed up Montjuic to see Montjuic Castle and to take in the views of the city.

Sometimes, the signs here can be a little confusing.

Here's the view of Barcelona from Montjuic. The big structure you can see in the upper right is the Sagrada Familia, about which I'll say more tomorrow.

I have no idea why this woman with the funny nose is about to beat someone over the head with a chair, but I figured she was worth a picture.

We ended our day with a show at the Magic Fountain.

Off to Barcelona

We're off to Barcelona for a few days. We were there a couple of years ago for a cruise, but we didn't actually see much of the city. This time we'll get to experience it.

While we're there, Tanner will turn 13. We'll officially have a teenager. We're going to be raising teenagers for the next twelve and a half years. Yikes!

And we may have crossed another line

I mentioned recently that Lindsey was quite enthusiastic about her study of the digestive system (even if she can't spell it). That enthusiasm was evident today on the way home from church. She was eating a Tic Tac and spontaneously made up a song about how Tic Tacs go into your mouth and then come out as "feces" later on. She wasn't doing it for shock value; that's just how she learned it, and she thought it was interesting.

As we all know, Stace is usually pretty stoic about things like that, and her reaction this time was pretty much what you'd expect.

We've crossed a line

I suppose it was inevitable the way things have been going. Lindsey may have finally officially surpassed me in her mastery of German.

We went to the store today. There was a sign there with one word I couldn't understand. I asked her if she knew what it meant. She did. That was a bit embarrassing. It's not like she's fluent or anything, but I think she's now better than me.

Dang it, Egypt!

Just when I've convinced myself that things have settled down enough in Egypt for Tanner and me to go there in February, things start getting crazy in Cairo again with riots and deaths and things like that. I still think most of the country is fine, but I'd feel a little better if Cairo would calm down a bit.

Life is uncertain

Sometimes, it takes a little while to wrap one's head around an unexpected death. That happened to me yesterday.

A couple of times in the past, we've worked with a mortgage broker who's about our age, named Alec. He really helped to bail us out when we hit some snags with the sale of our townhouse in Burnsville and the purchase of our house in Lakeville back in 2001. I had last traded messages with him about mortgages about a year and a half ago, I think.

I wanted to refer someone to him while I was home yesterday, but the contact information was at my office. I decided to just Google his name so that I could get his contact information that way. I was shocked when the first thing that popped up in my search was Alec's obituary. He was diagnosed with lymphoma in June of 2010. In December, he was deemed to be in remission, but just a month later, he died of a rare complication caused by the treatment. He had four kids, ages 14 and under.

It's not like Alec and I were great friends or anything. Other than time we spent on mortgages, I didn't really keep in touch with him. Still, it caught me a bit off guard. I had this mental picture of us working with Alec as we arranged things for getting a house when we move back to Minnesota. My mental picture got jarred.

I don't have any profound observations other than the obvious: life is uncertain.

The dujestuv system

The other night, Lindsey gave our family a presentation about what she's learned in school lately about the digestive system. As part of her presentation, she put together a little game where she had written words on papers around the house and we had to find them based on her clues. One of the words was "osfgis." Can you guess what that word is supposed to be? You're both probably faster than I am.

On that same theme . . .

My mind kept going in some weird directions based on yesterday's post. As one of my examples from yesterday shows, English has appropriated "do" not only for negatives, but also for questions. By that I mean that rather than asking, "Do you see him?" you could ask, "See you him?" That's how they'd do it in German (Sehen Sie ihn?).

This has all kinds of possibilities for shortening up the titles and lyrics of some of our classic songs by eliminating the unnecessary use of the word "do." Let me try a few out on you. Depending on your era, some of you might not know the name of the original to which I'm referring.

"Feel You Like We Do?"--Peter Frampton
"Believe You In Love?"--Huey Lewis
"Want You Really to Hurt Me?"--Culture Club
"See You What I See?"--Christmas Carol

See? Isn't that fun? I'm sure you can think of others. Give it a try. I still haven't been able to figure out how to get rid of the "do" in "Da Do Ron Ron," though. Maybe it would be "Ron Da Ron."

One more literal translation

I heard something in a song yesterday that made me think of one of my favorite literal translation quirks. It has to do with the abuse of the word "do" in English when one wants to indicate a negative.

Let's take an example. In English, we'd say, "I see him." German is the same: Ich sehe ihn. But what if you don't see him? Using a good dose of common sense, German just requires one word to make the negative: Ich sehe ihn nicht, which literally translates to, "I see him not." Now, you could say that in English, but you'd sound like you're about 400 years old and quoting either Shakespeare or the King James Bible. Instead, we commonly say, "I do not see him." (I'll ignore "don't" for now.) Why? Why did English co-opt the verb "do," which means something along the lines of taking an action, and turn it into a helping verb required to connote a negative? I know not.

Let's consider a really perverse sentence in English: "Do you do that?" When you think about it, it's really weird that we use "do" twice in that sentence and that it means something totally different in both places. This is one of the few instances where German comes out shorter than English: Tun Sie das?

And there's no way I'm going to revisit the warped English construction "I'm going to go."

Literal translation of the day, part 5

I'm already feeling like I'm wearing out this theme, so this will probably be the last post on this topic for a while. This one is relevant to our church's General Conference, a satellite broadcast that takes the place of our regular meetings twice a year.

Many of the Church leaders will start their remarks by addressing them to "my dear brothers and sisters" or "my beloved brothers and sisters." In German, the word for "siblings" is Geschwister, and they use the term much more liberally than we do. A speaker will often being his or her remarks with Liebe Geschwister, which literally means "dear siblings" or "beloved siblings." That would sound really strange in English but is perfectly acceptable in German.

Don't be surprised if my first talk in church upon our return to Minnesota begins with "My beloved siblings . . . ."