When I retired, I told myself that staying in germany required me to live like a german. In retrospect, that's not right. But that's another story. In any case, I decided to divorce myself from the Army, and live like a german. So I went to the unemployment office and told them I was looking for a job, one that would have some kind of future. Not just step and fetch it. So this weisel and I went round and round.
Nothing I had did or accomplished in my life before retirement amounted to a hill of beans. OK, I can accept it. Didn't like it, but accept it. Said weisel at the unemployment office told me that "All you amies, (slang for americans) want to start at the top, no one wants to learn anything. You know it all!" My reply was that I wanted to go to trade school and learn to be an electrician. Stopped that little rat cold. And that's what I did.
I went to school. I had never read or wrote german before my first day in school with a bunch of snot nosed 16-17 year old kids. I was 40. It was a 3.5 year course, I did it in 2.5 years. Big mistake, cutting off that one year, but that's another story.
About the first hour in school, I figured out that trying to translate all this stuff into english, so I could understand it, was not good. Because then I would have to translate it BACK to german, to use it. So from that point on, I never tried to learn anything in english. Only german. Now, of course, after 23 years, I have of course translated some of it in my head into english, but not all. So it takes a while to express myself technically in english. I do pretty fair in german though!
