Adventures in Survival

At this moment on a Saturday morning, I'm be-hoodied and be-blanketed, sitting on our double-mattressed bed with a hot cup of pfeffermintz tea (I'll never be able to say "peppermint" again).  You may be wondering why I'm sitting here still rather than up and about the house doing Saturday things like, perhaps, watching my new favorite, "My Little Ponies: Friendship is Magic" (German edition), on television?*

Well, it's mostly because our bedroom still has remnants of body heat and I'm conserving every bit of it while I can.

Because our heater and our hot water have stopped working.  Actually, it's been spotty for a month now, but this week has been the first time both have been off simultaneously.

Previously, our maintenance requests looked like, "Ohhhh...our heater hasn't been working for three weeks, but it's been okay so far.  Whenever you have a chance to look at it, let us knowwww.  Hugs and kisses.  Don't hate us."

But, after the hot water disappeared a couple days ago, we upped it to something really confrontational (for us), which looks more like, "Um.  No hot water?  No heat?  Please help us.  We die.  You should know that if this lasts for longer than two days we might start disliking you strongly."

There was actually even a day when the heater, the hot water, and the internet weren't working, but that is a dark time no one speaks about.

So, thank you to the Meldrums, for giving us an excuse to vacate our little weekend icebox and go to Berlin tomorrow.  A person can only spend so much time hunkered down in a bedroom before they start going a little crazy...



*  I'm only being weakly sarcastic about this.  I've actually gotten really tired of the only English television (24-hour CNN or BBC news), and any television for German adults is just too confusing, fast, and they, like, assume you understand words?  So, when I get bored enough for television, I go looking for kid's shows.  I highly recommend this if you want to learn a language from scratch.

In fact, I'll even give you a mini-review!  So, here are the best shows to watch if you actually want to try and learn some words:

Dora the Explorer
Sesame Street (Sesamstrasse, hah!  I love that.)

Here are the best shows to watch because you understand what the story is even if you can't understand all the words:

My Little Ponies: Friendship is Magic (I realize I could just say "My Little Ponies"...but the full title makes me laugh every time)
Spongebob Squarepants
Phineas and Ferb

Also, I'm just going to write a whole new post about German television watching now that I think about it.