Saturday, September 30, 2006

Rain on a Perfectly Good Carnival


Okay, I don’t want to mislead you, there was no actual rain, it’s a metaphor. You know, one of those things that have a deeper meaning. Except the meaning of this one isn’t all that deep. Or maybe I just liked the title and it has nothing to do with anything, you be the judge. Anyway, here is the just of it:

Today was our last Saturday of the year working for the Jugend Mobil. It seems they are packing it up for winter, since it gets really cold here. Yet another reminder that I still need a warm coat. Though part of me will miss the cursed contraption, the other part of me is with Gary and his sarcastic lament of ‘Shade’ (which means: That’s too bad, but has a slight aura of sarcasm to it.) I mean, I look back at the hours sitting around the colourful truck in the midst of our various games and average of 2 children playing them and I can’t help but get a few tears in my eyes. Of course they could just as well be tears of joy over getting Saturdays back, but who’s counting? Now don’t get me wrong, I know that there was some reason for the work, and it wasn’t all bad. There were good times playing soccer and connecting with kids via sports and games which don’t require an extensive knowledge of the German language. It made it easier, but it also took up every Saturday this month, usually for at least 6 hours. You see Saturdays are a day of rest, of sleeping in and watching cartoons and eating cereal for lunch and sometimes dinner if you felt the urge. Saturdays are a day of reading books and taking long walks, or maybe riding into town and walking around. They aren’t supposed to be days where you wake up at 7 AM (which for us is technically sleeping in anyway) to ride to Berlin and sit to sit in front of a truck all day trying to get kids to play basketball or the marble game.
But they did bring some good memories, like the time Gary ate it on the 4 person snow skis, which was amazing, or the time me and Gary challenged some German teenagers to a game of soccer even though they obviously were taking it easy on us, or the many times it provided us with free food and free cake and coffee (Kafee und Küchen). There was also the drunk guy in Berlin who we call Napoleon because he randomly did a Napoleon Dynamite kick before running around and stealing a piece of our bosses cake. It was also a ticket into a few pretty kickin’ German festivals we would have never known about. So, despite all my complaining, it did actually give us something to do on Saturdays and made us feel a little more important sometimes. So though in a way I’m glad to have a break from it, it is only because I know as soon as the weather turns nice again it’ll start up again and I’ll have cause to celebrate my precious little free time.

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