Winter clothes, German classes, and more TV

Written on Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Last Monday we got an unexpected surprise. As you may recall from previous posts, Abril and Roberto were to send our winter clothes by mail, hopefully before it got too cold here. They did, and trying to avoid a big delay in delivery, something like two months for “surface mail”, the 2 big boxes were sent “by air” on Tuesday of last week (from Indiana). It makes sense, since we would have needed our coats and long-johns way before December! Well, the boxes were supposed to take 2 weeks to arrive, but thanks to the swift and reliable US-Swiss mail, they arrived on Monday, hence the surprise. So now I have more than 3 long-sleeved shirts, and sweaters, and coats, and flannel pajamas, and more boots … you get the idea, (the clothes I brought with me were mostly summer clothes). I’m so happy! THANK YOU Abril and Roberto!

Last week we registered for a 3-month beginner course in German. What we learn will hopefully make life much easier overall. After all, what better setting to learn a new language? We started yesterday (tues oct 24), and it was good. The class is IN German, with a few (very few) explanations or translations to English. There’s a bout 15 students (including Gera and myself), and they are from all over: a few from Italy, a few from Portugal, and individuals from Spain, the US, Ireland and Poland. We were the only Mexicans, ha! The class is on Tuesdays and Wednesday from 8-10pm, and it takes us about 15 minutes to get there by tram. I will keep you posted on new developments on this area, but so far, I’m learning new words, and more numbers!

The Internet situation is, so far, pretty much the same. The cable people came by yesterday, and rewired the entire building, but they left and there was still no internet. They just said the modem will arrive in the mail, so again we wait.

Another surprising discovery took place yesterday. Turns out we have MORE channels on TV, 48 so far (if you recall a previous post, I thought there were only 5). We didn’t realize you have to program the channels in MANUALLY. You know how when you program a TV it has a “scan” feature?, well this one you had to scan yourself, and assign each channel a number. I discovered it when I was just clicking on the remote seeing what was what. I must mention at this point that the TV manual was NOT available in English, and Gera looked at it but he says it didn’t say anything about programming. Anyways, now I have plenty of TV to watch, although, just one channel in English (CNN1), and also MTV’s programming is sometimes subtitled, plus most videos are American.