One of my favorite things in the world is making friends with perfect strangers. In the States, it was a rare occasion for me to not strike up a conversation with the other mommies at the park, or talk to some random person who was eyeing the same item for sale at the grocery store. I love to open my mouth, and be friendly with people I don't know. In Texas, this is really easy to do. Texas is one of the friendliest places I know - so I was not alone in my friendly attitude towards strangers. People there don't bat an eye when someone they've never seen before begins to speak to them about their cute kid, or about how ripe and juicy the strawberries look. Texans are ready to talk to just about anyone. Texas is simply full of social butterflies, so when I lived there, I fit right in.

Here, things are different. My inner social butterfly is struggling to get out, but since I don't speak the language, and I'm not familiar with the culture, the social part of me seems to be stuck in a cage. Instead, of striking up random converstations, I people watch (without trying to stare to much). Instead of making friends with the mommies at the park, I evesdrop on their converstations just struggling to understand a word here or a word there. I have become a fly on the wall - and it doesn't suit me well.

The kids and I spent some time at a different, bigger park today. There were tons of kids there and lots of mommies too, usually paired off chit-chatting away. I watched. I thought about different things that I would say, if I were in Texas, and tried using google translate on my phone to figure out how I would say them in German - but could never figure it out before the right moment passed by. So I stayed quiet. It was weird.

In the meantime, I spent more time with my kids, which was fun. Because of my talkative nature, I'm realizing that in the past, I would usually use my time at the park to talk to adults - either friends of mine, or if no friends were around, I would talk to the strangers. Maybe it's just that I crave adult interaction, since the bulk of my day is spent with kids well under the age of puberty. But, without the ability to talk to the other adults around me, I played on the seesaw (Cooper+Addie=Mom for balance), ran races with the Tyler, and pushed Tucker on the merry go round so fast, it made ME sick! We had a great time. I'm sure glad that at least my kids speak my language.