Back to stereo!

Monday, 29th of August. This morning my ear got cleaned – what a difference! What big change in the hearing experience! Back to stereo! (There's still a redness inside, so they gave me some drops to cure, but it feels so much better now.) The ear irrigation wasn't that uncomfortable as other people had said it could be, but it was downright comfortable. And another very nice thing: Once again I didn't had to wait, we were in the waiting room for maybe ten minutes (Mark was with me to give me a lift and some company. I will miss him and Patti…).

Mark and Patti spoiled me so much… I think they really like their seahorse… – and I also think we care a great deal for each other. As they know about me loving cakes and biscuits they brought this one yesterday, just to make me happy – look, it smiled at me!

Yesterday evening another couchsurfer arrived and we had an nice late lunch together (I cooked a vegetarian casserole which was okay, but not as good as it could have been as it wasn't fully done, but we were hungry…) I'm curious how this being very familiar with each other and do lot's of jokes and banter with each other, what Mark, Patti and I did, acted to Katharina. After lunch and a delicious dessert Katharina made of fresh pineapple, strawberries and grapes, she, Mark and Patti went to the Bluegrass festival we planed to join since the day I arrived but never did the past days, but I was so tired I stayed at home and went to bed really early.

Katharina is a very nice, very polite person, especially when coming in at first time, when one still tries to find out how things work at the host's home. But she became very warm and enthusiastic quite fast. From talking to each other I think she's an very intelligent and open minded person. And she causes a new cognition: I did know, that as a German native speaker without that much practice in English usage I often say or write German sentences, that means sentences which are word by word translation from German into English. But I didn't know, that this can also happen in the other direction! Normally I speak a mixture of English and German when I meet other Germans (it depends just on what comes first to my mind), but today for the first time I did speak German sentences which were word by word translations from English into German! German sentences with an English grammar. Just unbelievable. Very curious experience.

I had such a great time while staying with Mark and Patti. Thank you so much to make me part of the family. It's a pity your home isn't around the next corner – but otherwise I wouldn't want you to live at another place as you do, so close to the sea and with this fantastic outlook. I like the way, Patti and Mark are with each other. He is on first sight more quiet, somehow calm and maybe also supinely (Patti called him a procrastinator) and Patti is much more energetic and talkative and in that way also aggressive (that's how she called herself). I know such relationships which are often much more about domination and repression, but with Patti and Mark you can feel so much love, so much care for each other, and of course both have a big sense of humour which makes it easy to handle daily routine and get on because this humour takes the edge off something. Surely they still have to take it seriously, and it's my impression that they do. I hope their relationship will go on like this and that they still will be able to complement each another in the way they do now: She's giving him more energy and direction and he calms her down, whereby she is able to be more softer. I would like to hear much more about Patti's past relationship which from the few facts I have heard seemed to be very destructive. I'm glad they found each other.