There is a hostel boat on the East Side of the river, called “Eastern Comfort.” Despite the crazy appearance of the boat from the outside - as well as its uglier sister "Western Comfort" - the inside of both boats are really quite nice. As it turns out, the hostel boat is run by an American from Seattle, who also throws a weekly “English-Speaking Party”. The goal of the party is to introduce Germans and other traveling foreigners to native English-speakers and spend the night speaking English. However, as the night progresses, it just becomes an international boat party with no particular language emphasis…
While I was there, a German man was speaking to one of my Spanish friends, and this is what he said about me (in all seriousness!), “Her German is fantastic, but her English is really strange. She should really work on that…” Whaaaaattt?? Last time I checked, my German was passable but the accent is funny and my English borders on perfection. *sigh*. This is why I have to constantly reassess myself and where I’m going in life…(just kidding).
We also spoke to a man from Burma. As he came over, he immediately said, “I’m really high, so I might say strange things.” We looked at him quizzically because he was pointing to a bottle of strawberry wine as he said this. “What?” “Are you really high or really drunk?” “Well, look at this bottle!! I’ve had almost half already!” Then we started laughing and asked if he had done any drugs, the mere suggestion of which shocked him. “No, no, no, no, no!! I drink but I do not do drugs!” Turns out what he meant to say was ‘really drunk’ – he didn’t understand that ‘high’ is only used for drugs. Then after I told him I was from California, he wanted to know where my parents were from. I looked at him quizzically and asked why he would want to know that.
“Well...isn’t everyone’s parents in California from Mexico?”
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