"sprechen Sie Deutsch"

Ugh...long time no post.  Jean says its lame to state that because its what everyone says in their blogs.  So there - sentence ended.

For those of you that don't know, we live on the very border with Germany.  It's funny sometimes to think about driving for 10 minutes and being in a different country! And its pretty obvious when you get there because my non-existent German makes me stand out like a sore "Daumen" (Google translate indicated that meant "thumb" - I guess my vocab is now up to a whole 5 words!).  Truthfully, I haven't made much of an attempt to learn German quite yet considering that I'm keeping French as my main focus.  Nevertheless, it's crazy to have another language at our doorstep.

When we enrolled Audrey in school, we decided to take advantage of the bilingual programs offered - bilingual French/German that is.  And to my surprise, the class is REALLY bilingual with a 50-50 split between the two languages.  While I'm not thinking this will necessarily add a third language for Audrey, I do think that the exposure to a new language at such a young age is something really hard to pass up.  So in order to try and reinforce some of what she's learning, I planned a mom/daughter shopping trip across the border.  Its really the same shopping trip I normally do, just with her in tow.







First stop - DM...the place where you buy all your toiletry items for half price what you'd pay in France. Audrey got a kick out of the mini carts made for the youngest of shoppers.  Germans are much more kids friendly in many ways with this store for example having their own public bathroom, changing station (with free diapers and wipes) and a pretty cool rocking horse.

Next up, across the street to the bakery/coffee shop for a mid-morning snack.  Now here too you can see that you're not in France anymore.  Pastries are about 50% bigger and not as nearly fancy.  Just massive amounts of dough and sugar and a whole lot of consonants to go with that increase in size.  I use the universal pointing of the finger and saying of "ein" to indicate one of the cinnamon rolls is what we are interested in. I add on a Milchkaffee since as a coffee addict, my caffeine containing vocab is quite strong. We enjoy our pastry and soak in the German language! Oh, and one other great thing about the Germans? They're much more American taste in music as witnessed by Chicago's "It's Hard for Me to Say I'm Sorry" playing on their radio.  So not only does Audrey get a German immersion morning but a nice intro to classic 80's music as well.  Not sure if she realizes how lucky she is.

On my way out, I can't help but notice the berliners, or jelly donuts.  Come on people, no wonder JFK got blamed for the mix-up.  Seems like a pretty easy mistake to me...