Engaged & Underage

& helping me practice German.

That's right, along with Shopping Queen (a German show, no subtitles, snarky male fashionista commenting on women's shopping challenge), and MTV's Made. Because when you start to think about the lowest bar possible, how to make it the easiest to listen to and read German, guilty, embarrassing television shows are it for me.

German language soap operas were just not doing it for me. Like American ones never really did. He's sleeping with her, and she is their daughter but they don't know it and now he is secretly meeting him. Ok.

Give me some real people. And shopping. Or teenage wedding plans. Might as well put my not-so-noble taste in TV to good use. The MTV shows are in English, with German subtitles, or with German dubbing on about 1 second delay. So I'm listening to English and then reading or hearing the German that goes with it. I may not learn much that will help at work, but I'm really getting comfortable with the German for married, in-laws, too young, wife, husband, forever, and "shut up!"

As for the German shopping competition show, that one is all in German and no subtitles. That is for mornings when I want a challenge as well as to judge what people's taste in clothing is. After that one, any grant writing I do will be full of catty comments.

Finally, I'm also at the point where I'll start trying to have coffee dates in German. With people I already know and like. Who make me laugh, or who can talk as fast as I can, who I have things I really want to talk about with. That is the more high-brow way, for sure.

But there are just so many hours of the day that can be spent having coffees. For all other times, there's instant Nescafe and recorded MTV shows in place of reading Facebook.