AMD 3

True Story:

Long story short, on Friday night after a suitably long day of work and classes, I may or may not have had a beer. Possibly followed by a couple more. One of my close friends was having a party at her house, so we decided to head down from the bars to sing her happy birthday at midnight.

When I walked in, I knew something was amiss. There were far too many tall, blonde girls for this to be a normal University of Michigan party. After a couple minutes of questioning, I found that one of my friends from work had somehow managed to convince eight Au Pair's to come to the party with him. And lo and behold, they were all 6 foot tall, blonde haired, blue eyed German girls.

The revelation that I was surrounded by 19 year-old blonde girls was only overtaken when I realized that I could actually write about this encounter for one of my classes. So I immediately went to work, trying my best to speak to each one of them in their native tongue before they realized I had no idea what I was doing and began speaking English to me. Lucky for me, two of the girls were quite nice and allowed me to spend the requisite 30 minutes conversing with them in/about German/Germany.

They were all from Northern Germany (mostly from Hamburg) and were taking a year off between secondary school and University to Au Pair for (i'm assuming) affluent Ann Arbor families. As a benefit, they get paid for their work and provided a stipend to do things like go out and drink with local college students. They also got the opportunity to take a couple courses in their intended field, and brush up on their English to boot. From what I gathered they all seemed to be liking it so far, although they missed their friends back home. It never ceases to amaze me how well the typical German young person speaks and grasps the English language.

Events like this remind me why I'm sitting in German class every Thursday night; so that I can go out and sprechen Deutsch on Friday nights.