Kapitel Zwei - Watching foreigners

These articles reminded me about the last time I went to New York City. It was me, mein Schwester, und mein Vater. We sat down in one of the many parks to eat our lunch we packed. As we sat there, mein Vater would point out all the different people he thought were foreign and name their nationality. At first I thought he was full of it. Then he pointed out a family walking towards us and said that they were Germans. Sure enough they walked by speaking to each other in Deutsche. I thought something was up and wanted to know how he knew that. He said that Germans always have a straight stare on their faces, plus the Vater was wearing I think loafers with high-whites (which apparently Germans did). He was pretty good too, he picked out a few more German and French families and I don't think he ever guessed wrong.

The article about statistics is also very pretty cool. Mein Physiks teacher is German and he always gets so excited when he is talking about boring stuff like that. We were doing a generic problem during our discussion and he got progressively more excited as he wrote out the problem. When he finished he almost broke the chalk piece in half slamming it against the board. He was like "Ja! Das big number!" I'm not even kidding, he says "Ja" and "das" all the time during lectures. After every explanation he says "Ja" to make sure we understand. It was pretty amusing how overly excited he got about a simple Physiks problem.

Personally, I've only met two Deutschelanders. We once had a foreign exchange student stay for a few days, she wasn't really a foreign exchange student though. She was a ballerina who was in America for a few weeks doing something and she had an aid or mentor that went everywhere with her. Pretty much the entire time she "Whined, moaned, and bitched" about everything from the weather to the bedroom we let her sleep in for free. What a jerk, we definitely didn't miss her once she left. Her mentor/teacher gave my sister a Teddy Bear before they left though and I was so jealous. I was only about seven years old so it was understandable. Good riddance you selfish Germans, that will learn you not to give me a gift.