es ist schwer, Deutsch zu sprechen, wenn man es für viele Jahre nicht versucht hat*

Things I was not expecting:

When I was seventeen, I spent a month in Nürnberg with a host family (less a week in Berlin) as part of an exchange program between an American association of high school German teachers and some part of the German government. It was an awesome experience, one of the two best things I have ever won in my life.

My host mother and I have kept in sporadic touch over the years; we began with semi-regular postcards and have now lapsed into nothing but Christmas cards. I briefly encountered my host brother on Facebook earlier this year; we exchanged greetings and that was about it.

So I was very surprised to get a phone call from Frau Martin this afternoon!

My German is quite rusty at this point, alas. I can more or less get my point across, but my grammar is shaky and I've lost a lot of vocabulary. It was also a bit tricky to understand what she was saying, since there was static on the connection, but it did get easier as the conversation went on and my brain went, "Oh, right, Deutsch! Um, where's the protocol for that... *rummage, rummage* This, maybe?" and things sharpened into better focus, as it were.

Frau Martin tried to give me her name on Skype, so we could talk again, but I have trouble with Skype and also am not at all sure I wrote down the right thing. But! I have agreed to write my email address and Skype handle and send them to her son via Facebook, so hopefully something will come of this.

She also told me that her son is now married (which I knew) and that he and his wife are expecting their first child in May. I did NOT know the latter news, so that was nice to learn. :-)

*Re the subject line: Like I said, my German grammar is shaky these days. Please feel free to correct my inevitable errors. :-)

ETA: Thank you to thady for the fix!

more issues with Livejournal

Here is the text of a support request I just opened:

I am trying to delete a spam comment that contains an embedded video. I cannot do this because the little red-outlined text box that contains the "Delete this comment" and other such options is opening UNDER the video rather than over it, so I cannot mark anything in it with my mouse -- I would be clicking on the video instead.

I have screened the comment and banned the account that posted it, but I would like to actually delete it.

I use IE8 as my browser. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,
edenfalling


...It occurs to me that I should have mentioned that I'm using the default site view and comment scheme. (I hate it, but I do not have anything like the technical skills to know how to go about changing it.) But in a way, that just makes the issue worse. This is not a problem arising from somebody's attempt to rearrange the way the site works. This is a problem arising from LJ's basic default code-for-everyone.

Argh!