When I was in my early twenties, living on my own in Portland and making my way about town, either on my bike or the bus, I would read the “missed connections/I SAW U” section of my local weeklies (Willamette Week, or Willy Week, or just Willy and The Mercury or Merc). I didn’t have a computer, so I didn’t know about Craigslist or other online sites. I used computers at the time to do occasional research and emailing, but mainly to type up papers for my Portland Community College classes and generally in the college’s communal computer lab.
Sometimes English just doesn’t make sense, v.2
Coffee Time
9 Tips on How to better communicate with Americans
Since I am an English teacher here in Germany, much of what I do is discuss intercultural communication. It is a wonderfully interesting topic that I one day would fully enjoy officially learning more about (and obtaining a certification in so as to appease the German culturist in me). This blog post, I feel, is about something we Americans and English speakers take for granted and that I often have to actually be reminded of anymore if I interact with Americans (especially one’s that are not used to German communication styles, as I find myself becoming more ‘German’ all the time in that regard), especially if I am on American soil!
The author makes some very good points with this post, otherwise I would not have reblogged it.
When first-time expatriates arrive in the United States they are often underprepared for the North American way of communicating. This is especially true for Central Europeans who tend to assume that
i) they learned enough about American communication patterns via literature and media consumption, and/or
ii) communication styles are very similar and thus, differences can be neglected. 
The trouble typically begins when expats do not detect or even ignore the transatlantic gap. Unfortunately, many Americans also lack the communicative fine-tuning to realize that their new colleagues from Germany or Austria share information differently. That’s when intercultural team building efforts can hit a roadblock. However, companies and their employees can prepare for these obstacles.
I compiled what I consider the 9 key aspects of the US-American communication style worth internalizing. You can get them as a FREE white paper over at my company website. Just leave your name and…
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Where I’m from, part II
‘The Motherhood’
So, as I’ve said before, but you might have missed it – I am pregnant.Continue reading “‘The Motherhood’”
Top 40 Albums of 2012 (20-1)
I’m sharing this post because music is as good as sex, sometimes better. You need it like you need food and water and as I get older I increasingly miss out on the plethora of good shit out there. I just can’t keep up like I used to, although I wish I could.
Have fun exploring the music, I am…
A few days ago I posted the first 20 in my Top 40 Albums of 2012 (check it out here). The first half of the list is always easier to compile than the final 20. With this, the top half of the list, I find myself swapping albums from one spot to the next, trying to refine my list to the perfect order. Of course, this “perfect order” is never truly found. On one day I’d much rather listen to my number 17 than my number 5 and vice versa. I can promise you, all of these albums are fantastic. In order to come up with a definitive order, I took into account the overall significance of an album, not just which has the best collection of songs, but which is the perfect album – the themes, the order of the songs, the cultural significance. Within those parameters…
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Good Riddance, Facebook
Oh, Germany – adventures in German culinary delights
A German New Year…
This post may seem a bit late, not coming before New Year’s Eve, but in my opinion it is better this way, since I now have three Silvester’s under my belt, I feel I have better authority to speak about such matters. Plus, I was on vacation – when am I not really?! No, kidding aside, I have thoroughly enjoyed sleeping in and staying up late and wonder how I will ever be able to go back to work – tomorrow.
livingtheamericandreamineurope.com 