Card/Board Games (or: How can I get a hold of you?)

Last night I attended a game night at a Studentenheim (dormitory) of a friend. There were six of us there, and we hung out in the common room playing Fluxx, Metro, and a game called Carcassonne. The Carcassonne game reminded me a bit of Settlers of Catan but not as fun. I wasn't any good at it, either and was quite happy when we moved to another game. The Metro game involved making train tracks to get your trains from one point to another and blocking your opponents paths, which appealed to both my engineering brain and diabolical nature. Fluxx was a strange card game. The best way I can describe it is to say it was like UNO, but infinitely more complicated. The deck consisted of four different types of cards: Keepers, New Rules, Actions, and Goals. All of the cards had several sentences' worth of instructions written on them in English. You should know that I was the only native English speaker there. This made for a very slow game, and I think several people got frustrated by it. I liked it, because the game was always changing (a state of Flux, perhaps?).

What really struck me last night was how well these 5 exchange students could communicate with each other. The group consisted of:

1) an Austrian guy who spoke German and English
2) a German guy who spoke German and English
3) a Dutch girl who spoke Dutch, English, and German
4) an Italian girl who spoke Italian, English, and German
5) a Finnish girl who spoke Finnish, English, German AND Italian(!)
6) an American guy who spoke English and broken German (guess who!)

They may have known more languages, but those are the ones I noticed. Most of the conversation was split between German and English. When the other 5 were talking to each other they used German, but they would switch to English if they needed to explain rules or we were all talking. The Italian and Finnish girls would sometimes converse in Italian, and the German and Austrian guys would often launch into rapid-fire German conversations. I don't blame them, either. Speaking in one's native tongue to another native speaker is such a comfort. I know that I like talking to other Americans where I don't have to pare down my vocabulary to the simple words, slow down my pace of speaking, and remove all idioms.

That reminds me. Never say, "How can I can get a hold of you?" to a non-native speaker. It's both confusing and a bit scary for them to hear that.

So I was impressed with these students' ability to talk to each other and be understood in both their own language, but also in a second language. Being able to express yourself simply, yet clearly, in another language besides your native tongue amazes me. I could understand most of the German being spoken, so hearing them string words into sentences and sentences into thoughts and ideas that were unstandable was just.... so..... cool. People are amazing sometimes. I have trouble articulating my thoughts in English, while others are doing it in 3 languages.

That reminds me. I need to work on German homework this weekend.

But now, I need to work on my taxes. April 15th is coming up.