Found in translation

• Yesterday I just had to read aloud for monshu's benefit my translation of the practice sentences with which Lesson Ten of Teach Yourself Latvian opens:

  A light flame burns on the range. I sit by the fire and wait for tea. Mother cooks fish for tea. At breakfast we drink coffee. My little sister drinks a jug of hot milk. Father drinks a healthy mug of beer. Our mother has many sleepless nights. The younger brother is sick. Mother cries: her eyes are full of tears. She says, "I cry on account of you."

  It's like a fifth-grader tried to write an Ibsen play!
• Today we were at Gethsemane looking at Christmas ornaments and they had a basket full of Christmas pickles. I almost bought one just for the little tags which were attached, because they were bilingual. The English side goes on about this "old German custom" whereas the first line of the German text talks about how "more and more families are breathing life into this tradition which originated in the 20th-century". (As my dear readers know, they're actually both wrong, of course; it's a strictly American custom--or at least it was until German glass ornament manufacturers who were producing them for US consumption decide to have a crack at marketing them domestically--but it most likely originated in the late 19th century.)