From the title of this post, you might be expecting some major big news, but in reality, this posting is literally-named: Indeed, I experienced my first earthquake this weekend! I was pretty damn excited! I was eating lunch at Ángela´s house in Berlin, and all of a sudden the room started shaking a little bit. At first I assumed the washing machine was just off-balance, since the same sensation happened a few times a day in my old apartment when people would do laundry. But after a moment, it occurred to me that her family doesn´t have a washing machine, and that this must be the real deal! It was a pretty small earthquake, and Ángela immediately took the wind out of my sails by proclaiming it a “temblor” as opposed to a “terromoto.” I guess that´s the difference between “The Big One!” and “An Earthquake For Pussies.” Still, whether it was a tremor or an earthquake, I was pretty excited, since the closest I´d come to an earthquake before was when I was living in Regensburg. One morning while I was sleeping there, I felt rumbling in my room. However, it turned out to just be a delivery truck revving its engine outside of my frail, medieval building.
Not much else has been going on of note, though. I am still playing a bit of soccer most Monday nights, but I won´t be able to tonight because some of my damn 6th graders were cheating on their final, and now ALL of them have to retake the exam (which I, of course, need to re-write). So I decided to make it so hard that when they look at it, their eyes will start bleeding! Ha ha ha!! I guess I´m getting a bit annoyed with some of the tykes and their end-of-the-year restlessness. I was proctoring an exam for my 4th graders, and I told them if they didn´t stop talking, I´d cut off their lips and throw them to my dog…
Vacation, anyone??
Anyhow, no soccer tonight, which is sad because there was this one dude named Orlando that kind of adopted me last week. He sort of looks like Costa Rica´s answer to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad…in tennis shoes. He had finally learned my name, and kept shouting, “Ryan!…” followed by some unintelligible shouting in Spanish about what I should do with the ball. Bless his heart, because even if I could have understood what he was saying, I probably wouldn´t have had the physical aptitude to actually carry out any of his suggestions. Oh well. At the end of the game, though, he said I played “excelente!” I´m still learning Spanish, but I´m pretty sure that means “Not bad at all, friend…not bad at all.”
So until next time, be “excelente”!
Sitzman
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