We're all related?

"A little learning makes the whole world kin."
-- Proverbs xxxii, 7

I took this quote straight from a short essay by Mark Twain called "The Awful German Language." It was mentioned and recommended by my German teacher if you can believe that!
Actually I'm looking forward to reading it. I think it may even offer me more insights to write about for y'all!
The new German class is good. It's in a nice neighborhood just a 5 minute Tram ride from the office. In fact, 5 of us drove over to what has become a favorite Turkish restaurant of my colleagues (my first time there) to eat dinner and I simply walked across the platz (Rosenthaler Platz) to my class! Now that's just cool!

But my teacher, Jane is great, funny, and my classmates are from all over. Brazil (I think), Italy, Israel, Australia, England, Canada and moi from U know where. Truly international group. Sehr tolle! One student pointed out the funniest thing in class. She said that all of us have jobs in Berlin and all of us are in a German class to learn the language!! Hilarious! Goes to show that you can survive here without knowing the language. But that's not the point for me.

So that was last night, meantime today was quite the nice day. Of course it's still cold but this morning it was so gorgeous I wish I had taken my Pentax with me. The sun was shining through a light fog as I walked adjacent to this little park on the way to work. I saw a couple of great photo ops.
The ground was all frozen and the frost looked so crisp in the morning sun. Then I worked - nothing exciting there...
And on the way home I listened to the soundtrack to Slumdog Millionaire. That's a great movie and a great soundtrack. Oscar nominated as we found out today!
That was some nice news. I enjoyed that movie, I dated someone who was born in Mumbai and have been interested in seeing India for a while now. So, I'm cheering for it to win something.

Anyway So, now I'll have to spend some of my free time learning German grammar and adding to my vocabulary. I have a new friend who is working as a translator so perhaps I can get some assistance there when we get together again although it's always so much easier to just speak English.
I need to just date someone who only speaks VERY little English. I'm sure that'll improve my skills quickly!

I'll keep you all posted on how I'm doing with our German "cousins" over here. ;)
And by the way, one of the most popular film festivals is coming up in a couple of weeks, the Berlinale! Berlin Film Fest. I have to get myself invited!

hugs,
L
P.S. That champagne on Inauguration day was good! I got the real deal, Veuve-Clicquot-champagne. Very nice! But we missed half of Obama's speech because the news channel was speaking over him in German and CNN.com and msnbc were completely overloaded and wouldn't load. So finally we got KCRW online at Yvonne's suggestion. Love public radio! We all listened like we were back in the 40s WWII! It was hilarious. But of course we watched the video with no sound on the big screen that was several seconds ahead of the stream. There's nothing like having an American moment with 3 Germans and one Canadian co-worker sitting around 2 computers and a big screen tv. Of course Yvonne and I really appreciated it. It makes me happy to one day come back home. :)