video cameras

Even though the title suggests that i'm going to talk about a camera, that will have to come later because i like to do things in chronological order and that didn't happen til today and i have to talk about yesterday first...so bear with me =)
So...yesterday was my first Sunday here and it was overall a good day. Worshiping with just 6 people, Josh, the only German, and 5 americans in a German city was eye-opening. I know you're thinking that I was discouraged by this but only for a bit...just because i missed the singing and fellowship that i've been so used to. But it's that exact fact that makes me realize that I've been a little spoiled. Worship with so many christians is awesome and it honors God in such great ways but worship is not about being with friends or social time. It's about God! and that is why yesterday made me happy. I saw that worship with God can be done with so few people in a spirit of humility and it also affirmed my purpose here and the fact that God wants me here and that there are people here just as wonderful and loving and in need of God's grace as in the states.
So...on to the happenings after worship. The Perrys, Brielle (a girl from Ohio...i'll tell her story later) went to eat soup at the train station and it was delicious! Dwane brought another mattress for me and so we took it to Elfi's place and put it in my room...now i feel like the princess and the pea! My bed is already about 6.5 feet high and now i have 2 mattresses on top of that...so yea, i'll look down on you from my perch ;)
I had a pleasant afternoon reading and talking to Elfi a little bit and then at 4 Elfi and I took her car to Dwane's because she was cooking dinner for them...schnitzel! Carla, I have to say that yours tasted just about the same and it was just as good! We ate and had a great time here and Dwane and I had a good talk with Brielle about her situation...so for her story now. She came here back in August to take a job teaching English. Dwane found out about this job through a priest he knows and he thought it would be a great opportunity for Brielle. The job was described to the priest, dwane, and therefore Brielle as a definite teaching job. That is not what it has been. She is basically a babysitter for young children and while she is not allowed to speak German to them, she feels they aren't learning through this method. There is a lot of other circumstances surrounding this and for a long time Dwane has been telling her that it's ok to say that she was misled and to quit. So she decided to talk to her boss today and last night we really encouraged her to do this because she was miserable. So today she talked to her boss and her boss was very understanding and so Brielle's last day will be March 19th. We're very excited for her because this is such a weight off her shoulders. She has stuck it out for a very long time.
This morning I met with Dwane and Carolin. She is a very sweet, good hearted person and she and I had a really good conversation after our short Bible study. She's married to a Russian guy from Moldova named Sasha. She invited me to her place tomorrow night and I'm really looking forward to getting to know her a lot more.
Dwane met with Werner, another friend of his while Carolin and I were talking and he is a character. I really want to talk with him about how Leipzig was before the wall came down because he's lived here his whole life and he's in his late 60s. He still does gymnastics! he reminds me of those Alpen people you see on commercials...he'd look really authentic in lederhosen ;) spry...a very good word to describe him.
Werner and I and dwane went to look at the apartment that the perry's are moving into and werner did something so German it was hilarious. We were looking around the place and Werner was opening the oven, and he opened a drawer and there was some stuff in it and a stain on the bottom and he licked his finger and rubbed on it and it started to come off so he said to he lady showing us the apartment: "this is dirty! aren't you going to clean it?" and it seems so rude but here that is completely normal =)
Ok, to the title =) funny story: this afternoon dwane asked me if I could run an errand. He has video on a tape of his wrecked car. If he can get this video on a CD, he can turn it in to his insurance and maybe get quite a bit of money back. There were a couple problems: he's not sure exactly which tape, and we can't look at them with the video camera because the battery is dead and they accidentally left the plug-in cord in Stuttgart. So, our mission was complicated. Annalisa and I set off to try to find a place that would let us use their plug in, or buy an inexpensive one. Find the place on the tape where the video of the wrecked car was, and have them transfer it to a CD. Dwane also does not have the cord to plug the camera into his computer. So, we went one place and they said no, they couldn't do it (by the way, my german is definitely not good enough to be talking about electronics!) so we went to another place and through some german/english communication discovered that a new power cord was 100 euros! yes, and would take 2 weeks to get, and a new battery was 50 euros. on top of that, recording the tape onto a cd can't be done in parts, it has to be the whole thing...and they have to send it off to a lab for 3 days. How ridiculous. You would think that in such an efficient country things could be a bit easier. Well...so that was pretty funny but we decided not to do any of it. A friend of Dwane's is coming on Thursday and hopefully we can do it on Dwane's computer without any tech support. Cause that call could surpass the "longest one in the history of the world" ;) that's an inside joke, sorry.
ok, this thing is way too long already but i hope you've enjoyed the escapades. have a great week!