Turning Bun

I met Bun again last night for our weekly language exchange (I learn Dutch from her and she learns English from me). She's still fantastic at English and I continue to struggle in Nederlands but we chat on anyway - over tea, coffee, water, and apple juice about anything or anyone that comes to mind. Last night was our third meeting so we've already discussed topics such as who our significant others are, where we/they work, her pregnancy, our families, the shops we've gone to, the city of Rotterdam itself, etc. Needless to say the topics of our conversations become more diverse the more time we spend with one another. Last night she told me how fun it was to learn little catch phrases that she could 'shock' her husband with. Well, this whole process started off quite tame, for example, a week ago I taught her the meaning behind 'wing-it', as in "Oh, I'm just going to wing-it!" She said that she'd use it when cooking dinner the following night when her husband would ask her what she was thinking about cooking. Well, since then we've slowly gone down hill.

In my defense, I've had quite a few people trying to teach me naughty Dutch words ever since I arrived! For example, on one of the first days that I arrived Pdot taught me: "Hij/zij is lekkerding". This means "Oh, he's a tasty morsel" as in good looking man or woman (Note: I only use it when I'm looking at my picture of Luke in his new suit, trust me, hij is lekkerding!). On another occassion, my cousin Malt (an amalgamation of his real name, the place where he lives here in the Netherlands, and also a descriptor of his favorite drink) taught me what to say when I go to a video store looking for an action flick. "It's easy" he says with a sly grin on his face "All you have to say is: Hi! I'm looking for a film with skeeters, titters, and helekopters". 'What does that mean?' I said. "Oh, you know, shooting, tits and helicopters". Nice, and that's my family!

So last night I think it's more the fault of my previous language instruction than anything else, which made me feel the need to teach Bun the words and meanings behind "scatterbrained" (not too bad), "poo vs. poop" (getting worse - this started off as a technical question), "the crapper/pisser" (in my defense this one was related to the previous topic) and I'm sure what will become everyone's favorite: "knocking boots". We had a good laugh about the last one, she was practically rolling on the floor laughing that was made even more funny by her current roundness.

Despite the fact that I may be turning Bun for the worse at least we're having fun trying to learn the language. Besides, we're just keeping it interesting...now whose the one with the sly grin on her face ;)