2013

I’m sure most of you are familiar with the following scenario:

At some point, you’ve started to learn another language for one reason or another. Perhaps you came to like this language but unfortunately, you never had enough opportunities to use it. In time, you’ve forgotten most about it. Then comes the day it would come in handy – but even the most basic vocab and grammar are gone. How annoying! Everything you had invested into this language was all for nothing because you were too lazy to spend time on maintaining your language skills.

Welcome to my world. This is exactly what happened with my French – and I’m about to do something against it.

So much for sticking to the book-buying ban from the TBR-Reduction-Extreme challenge. But hey, you haven’t seen what I’ll get in April. This is next to nothing compared to my Easter haul!

In March, we played a round of Stadt, Land, Fluss, an infamous German game that requires only a piece of paper, a pen, the ability to handle time pressure, and a considerable amount of general knowledge. If one’s convincing, one can replace the latter through a good deal of imagination (it can be a little like Scrabble – discussions and arguments included). So I’m not sure how it is called in English but it seems to be the equivalent to Scattergories with the difference that one uses the resources at hand. It is one of the long runners for killing time during free periods at school.

In February, Crini invited us to dine with her. We were allowed to choose our bookish dishes from the following categories: aperitif, starter, main course, dessert . . .

By now, I’m pretty sure you’ve noticed that I have bilingual posts. I have no idea whether I will keep it that way. For now, it’s more or less a test drive, but I’d really like to know what you think about it. Which language do you prefer? English? German? Or would you read both? Any suggestions?

Regardless, I strongly suggest that you stick to the English version if that’s possible since that is the language in which I write my posts (for now). If that changes or if German is the more convenient language for a certain topic, I’ll let you know . . .

But who am I anyway? Well, I answer to the beautiful name of Cara. I have to say I really truly love my name, which is Irish for friend and Italian for dear/precious. Unfortunately, everyone else seems to hate it. How do I know that? Well, they tend to call me preferably Clara, but also Carla, Cora, Kira, or something along these lines. And that happens like 95% of the time. When someone instantly gets it right, I’m so happy that I have a hard time to stop myself from flinging my arms around this someone’s neck. Really, what’s so difficult to get a name right that consists of only three letters/phonemes?! They can’t even read it out when it’s right in front of them!

Hiya! Please, do come closer. I won’t bite, I promise! I know one cannot be too careful when confronted with a mythical creature. But I’m harmless as long as you keep me away from books. Now, you’re probably thinking I’m either stupid or crazy, depending on your language skills. But don’t fret, I don’t spider (ok, I’ll stop using jokes that require to be fluent in German. Such a nasty hobbit! … Sorry. I just wanted to keep it light and funny since the next part is going to bore you to death. But hey, it’s a great linguistic analysis and you’ll hardly notice that I just made that up.)