I go to a Chinese bible study every weekend. The hosts live in Reihen. To get to their house from my apartment, first I take tram #8 and transfer to tram #6 at Claraplatz, and vice versa on my way back home. I've done quite a few times already so I thought I could go without a map.
Last time when we finished the study, it was almost 11pm. I got on tram #6 as usual, just as I was settling in my seat, the conductor uttered a long long sentence in German. Since all my neighbors seemed extremely composed, I decided to ignore the announcement.
A short moment later, I discovered the tram was crossing the Rhine River --- but it should have stayed in this side of the river until I get to Claraplatz! I hurried to get off the tram, since I was standing in the pouring rain so I got on another tram heading the opposite direction without knowing where I was heading.. finally arrived home by taxi.
The miserable experience forced me to bring my German study into agenda. So yesterday, for the first time in my life, I opened a German book and thought I would like to at least memorize some vocaburary. The first word came into my eyes was "frau", meaning "woman", or "Mrs/Ms".
I praise God that this was indeed a very blessed day in my life --- because I had thought this word means "to". I've seen it many times on the envelops of the mails I received: "Frau Mindy Fang". I took it for granted that it means "To Mindy Fang", and for the past entire month, I had been comfortably and confidently "frau"ing everybody on my outgoing mails... including:
Frau: British Consulate Geneva
....... (speechless)
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2 comments:
When I was visiting Paris, I was really nervous whenever the train station says something--always ask some young person what it is about!
if you set your study goal as to someday understand the train conductor's announcement, you might have a long long way to go (T_T).
I say this on my experience from both Tokyo and New York's subway--New York is worse than Tokyo--after 5 yrs in the states I still can't understand more than 40% of what they say--according to a local newspaper, neither do the locals..
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