It’s funny the things that stick in your craw when you learn a new language. For some its pronunciations. For others its words in the new language that sound like swear words in their mother tongue (Irish had some real humdingers!). For me, one of the hardest things to adjust to with German is the use of formal and informal …
You Say Potato, I Say…Zulassungsbescheinigung
We get a lot of comments from people about how lucky we are to live where we do, how exotic our lives must be, and one question we get asked all.the.time: What’s it like living in a foreign country?? Let me tell you a story… Today, I needed to run some errands. I needed a winter coat – like, a …
7 Ways Learning a Language is Like Being the Parent of a Newborn
We are currently in the middle of learning our third language (not counting the snippets of Spanish and American Sign Language we both picked up growing up). As I’m going through this process again, it struck me once again how humbling it is to start learning to communicate from scratch. A friend recently asked me what language learning is like. …
In A Courtyard of Stone
We enter the empty courtyard on a brisk Sunday morning. The sky, a cloudless azure, is a stark and beautiful backdrop to the towering stone spires and turrets hovering above. We are stopped in our tracks by the beauty. The stature. The solitude. The silence. We stood there for an eternity – though really only a moment or two – …
From Sea to Shining Sea: Tips for Helping Ex-Pats’ American Re-Entry
So you have family or friends living overseas, and they’re coming back to America! Whether they are coming for a short vacation, a few months, or moving back permanently, you’re ecstatic and can’t wait to see them. Right? If they’re anything like me and my family, they can’t wait either! We have been back in the States for almost six …
First Name Basis (Or, Culture Shock 3 Years On)
Padraig. Maire. Mairead. Sinead. Siobhan. Luisne. Nora. Deborah. Tony. Traolach. Donal. These are just a few of the names of folks we know around here. I’ve noticed since we’ve been here people always greet me using my first name. This has both made me smile, and unnerved me. It made me smile because I felt special; the fact that they …