In the past two weeks, there has been an extraordinary amount of sickness going around our flat, which began with me and was subsequently passed on to M. Yet in spite of feeling under the weather (and thank goodness the weather has been cold, and rainy, because being sick when the weather is sunny and awesome is like salt in the wound), it has been a particularly cozy and laid-back couple of weeks of taking care of one another.
With all this hanging around in bed and resting up, there has been more time for reading – currently M. is in the middle of “Middlesex,” which I am excited to start when he completes. In the meantime, since I am on a bit of a Eugenides kick, I decided to begin reading “My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead.” Unfortunately, for whatever reason, I can’t quite get into it so it has been placed on hold. Instead, I am currently going back and forth with “Promiscuities” and “American Dervish,” both of which are interesting reads for very different reasons.
In addition to novels, however, M. and I have also begun a new tradition of sorts, which is reading German children’s books most every evening. This was kickstarted a bit by the recent enrollment into a new German class, and I feel that reading a book every evening not only gets me reading out-loud and working one-on-one with my pronounciation, but also gives me a better feel for the language, whether I am realizing it or not. Children’s books are also excellent because they are easily understood but each contain new and challenging words for me, so by taking note of these, I am slowly growing my vocabulary.
Our current endeavor is Michael Ende’s books about Jim Knopf and Lummerland, and M. is looking for accompanying television episodes of the Augsberger Puppenkisten, which are based on the books. In addition to all the language acquisition benefits, I enjoy having these 30 minutes in the evening to cuddle up together and come down from our days. You might even say it’s one of the highlights of my day.