Today I want to sing the praises of my German teacher, Monika. First and foremost, she's a great teacher (I met her first at a language school, but she now gives me private lessons). She taught German, English and economics to adults most of her life. She is now mostly retired. We are of similar ages, so we have a lot of topics we can talk about. But she also pushes my grammatical knowledge. She drives from about 40 minutes away (each way) to give me a lesson. But even more, she's done a lot for me, ranging from helping me figure out the washing machine (It's not me, it didn't make sense to her either, but she helped me understand what it was trying to tell me, even if it didn't really work correctly) to taking home the chicken I bought that we didn't eat right before our trip to Helsinki and putting it in her freezer to keep it from spoiling for me. She also told me about a sale on "houseshoes" (slipper like things to keep your feet warm in a German house) at Aldi -- the parent company of Trader Joe's, but more like a cross between Walmart and Costco, and lent me a rain jacket to take to Italy because I lost mine in the Frankfurt airport. When we stop going to Germany, I am going to really miss her.
We leave for Venice tomorrow, starting a Backroads bike trip from Parma to Verona on Sunday. I'm going to try something different in the way of blogging -- taking pictures on my phone and posting them with a short commentary. That might help me keep current, rather than leave the entire trip till I return (as usually happens). Or it might not work. But I'll try.
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