Won't You Be My Neighbor

I've only met a few, but I like the neighbors so far!

While I was trimming the bushes out back today, a little neighbor kid kept saying "Hallo" and waiving.  I would respond "Hallo" and waive back over and over until he got tired of saying it.  After the landscaping work was done, I decided to play with him in the neighborhood sandbox.  I soon learned from his mom that his name is Aaron and he's the same age as my niece Paige.  I explained to his mom that I know about as much German as her two-year-old, so he and I should be able to communicate a little.  Luckily, she's pretty good at conversational English, so we talked for more than an hour in the beautiful sunshine.  She only works one weekend per month as a nurse, so she said I can hang out with her, Aaron, and their other son Ben (who was at Kindergarten) anytime I was bored at home in the future.

People told me that it will be hard to get folks to talk with me in German here because everyone wants to practice their English skills and, sure enough, as soon as her husband got home from running errands, he was excited to talk with me in English as soon as he learned I was from the States.  He said he uses English often at work, but doesn't feel like his sentences are always right.  He said "please correct me if my grammaticals are wrong, because I want to get it right."  I didn't have the heart to correct that one, but agreed that I would correct him in the future.

We all had a great morning together playing with Aaron and dodging his squirt-gun full of water!  :-)