The end of a long day calls for a Milka, yes?

Yes. This is actually the best chocolate that has ever been in my mouth (sans wrapper, of course.) I can see myself becoming addicted to to it pretty quickly, although I’m not usually a huge chocolate fan. Milka has the power to convert me that quickly. Disturbing. But I did save a few squares for when the Minkus gets home from work, because she’s had a long day and definitely did more work than I did today. (I also bought rum & coke, but I’m sure that’ll shape up to be a story for another day.)

Good news – I went to a second job interview this morning, and they want to offer me a job as long as their authority figures or whatnot approve of their recommendation to hire me… complicated government stuff. And I won’t know for a couple of weeks whether I’m actually hired, because it’s the government of Japan, but the interviewer guy sounded like he really wanted to hire me… Again, more details on the job itself if I actually get it. I KNOW, super suspenseful, right?

So that leaves me no choice but to enjoy this city for the next couple of weeks (it was beautiful out again today, sunny and 15 degrees – suck it, Canada) and attempt to learn German. And it will definitely help me out at this new job if I know at least some basics going into it. Not knowing the language of the country in which you’re living is kind of a big deal, but since I happen to know English it makes everything a lot easier. As uneasy as I am about the idea of English becoming the “world language,” as seems to be happening, I do feel thankful every time I approach a cashier or other person with whom I must interact and they respond to my sheepish “Sprechen Sie Englisch?” with a “Yes, but it’s not very good” (note: their English is usually good, and in every case better than my abysmal German attempts). 

Thus, my self-motivating German lessons begin tomorrow… or soon thereafter. Right-o! The problem with this scenario is, I’m a chronic procrastinator and also pretty naturally lazy, and grad school has only strengthened these rather unfortunate traits. Facebook has amplified them a thousand-fold.

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The rum & coke part of the story, that’s key for this next part. We invited a few people over to our (mainly bare apartment, great for entertaining) and Mink’s friend Adi ended up towing along four university exchange students with him. Apparently they’d been trying to go curling and failed to get into the arena or something: Alicia & Amy’s – The Alternative to Curling! Despite the lack of seating, we all had a nice evening and I got to talk to three people from Romania (one who speaks five languages, no big deal though), one from Slovakia and one Serbian born in Vienna about language and how I don’t know German. I think this might be a recurring theme this year.