Randomness....

This is not a well thought-out post. Just thought I ought to warn you, since you might be thinkin' that those last two posts were really with it, what with the photos and the related writing and stuff. 'Cause you'd be thinkin' wrong, my friend.

I have "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" stuck in my head. Some of you might know it as "that 'Glory, Glory Hallelujah song". Catch yourself humming that under your breath in the supermarket and you might wonder if you are as nutty as the woman standing in front of me at the check-out.

I don't think she was nuts. Probably a high-functioning autistic. (Proper nuts are the people who believe they are Jesus and go around baptizing people with bottled water, whether you want them to or not.) I did think she was going to have an episode when she couldn't get her plastic bag to open, but she managed and the people behind me gave her her space and didn't get frustrated that she was taking a very long time to pack her stuff into her bags. I imagine as she biked home, she was thinking, "who was that humming lunatic in SuperBrusen! I have *got* to stop shopping there!" I kept trying to not hum. But then I'd realize I was. I've even learned to hum as I breathe in... how annoying.

Danish class continues to amuse. We lose more students to divorce and break-ups as time goes on, but we did lose one girl because her job felt she knew the Danish they wanted her to and so they wanted to stop paying her to go to Danish and put those hours into work. (I'm not so sure that sentence makes sense.) We're down to about 10 and we get along quite well. There is usually much laughter.

One of the girls from Morocco has been missing a lot of class recently. As a result, her Danish is really slipping and she's also been very distracted in class. Today a man with a large folder of paperwork came in at break when the teacher was out and talked to her at length. We were all trying to not listen, while translating what he was saying in our heads. Ugh, it's become impossible to ignore people these days. I'm always curious to know if I can understand what they are saying!!

Anyway, he finished talking to her by asking if she'd understood, and she said "yes" so he left. We didn't quite understand, so we asked her what that was all about. She had no idea. In almost perfect unison we cried, "Men du sagde du forstod!" (But you said you understood!) We tried our best to help her out (with the bits we'd been trying so hard not to overhear while we were listening intently), but she seemed completely uninterested in what had happened or in how to fix the problem. The other woman from Morocco was rather frustrated with her. This foolish girl got quite the lecture in Arabic. There are times and places to pretend you understand what someone is saying, but any official looking person with paperwork, who calls you by name... that's the person you should tell if you don't get what they are saying.

Good God! That's how you end up with extra auto insurance for a car you don't even have!!

Something is going on there with that woman, but it's not like she's going to tell me and it's not like there's anything I can really do about any problem she may have. But sometimes I'd really like to slap her and yell, "it's YOUR life, take some responsibility for it! Do something, don't just wait for someone to do it for you!"

Speaking of which, the left-overs will not reheat themselves. Lazy bastards!

*hmmm hm hm hum hum hum la da la dadda da ta da*