Pick-a-Little, Talk-a-Little

A rather short hour and a half bus ride from uetersen was the penultimate stop on our European tour: Stockelsdorf, a little town directly outside of Lübeck, Germany.  We were able to spend a couple of hours walking around Lübeck before heading to meet our host families.

If I understood correctly, they were getting ready to build a new student housing facility and discovered ruins from the 16th (or possibly it was the 14th) century.  The only thing I found in my back yard was an old rusty coke can :(

Random German statues on top of a building

The German version of Hogwarts?

Next was off to meet our host families, and I knew it had to happen sometime on this trip-- they didn't speak a lick of English... and I don't mean as in Stéphane's  not speaking English.  Apparently the information packet they had for me said that I could sprechen Deutch, but I think that was a miscommunication from the fact that I took a semester of it... seven years ago at Baylor!  I mean I can say general things like "My name is Joseph" (that was taken care of practically immediately) and "The sun shines" (which it certainly was).  Beyond that I can only quote text from Elijah, and I don't think "Take the prophets of Baal and let not one escape, bring them to the brook and slay them there," or "Rise then, select and kill a bull and light a fire under him and call your god's name" are appropriate or topical dinner time conversation starters, no matter how good a grilled steak sounded at the moment. So basically we ate in silence with the occasional: "Where come from last?" "Where is next city?" etc.

It is, of course, rather unfortnate because they really were an extremely nice couple.  I think they were more worried that I wasn't going to have a good time because of it, but it did give me a good opportunity to get some much needed vocal rest, for as the tour goes on and on I find myself getting more physically and vocally tired even with a good ammount of sleep. 

Hedi and Gerhard!