Some days you reflect and think how wonderful God has been to place you where you are and at this precise time. Saturday was such a day. We arose fairly early to travel to Swizterland for our first field hockey mini tourney. (Yes we are living in Germany but Basel has the closest team, just 20 minutes from us.) Vaden was to play in at least three matches. She just started the sport the last week of April, is catching on quickly and seems to enjoy it. Wils and Stryker-Ann also play with their own age groups.
To say the day was a success for us personally is an understatment. Vaden started the first half field game and looked like a deer caught in the head lights...no idea where to go or what to do. (Field Hockey Momma here had to bite her tongue more than a few times and be reminded that children are not born with 5 years training in sport, no matter how genetically predisposed they may be, ha-ha to me) the second game was a great improvement, and the third 25 minute game revealed a changed player –running around the field attacking balls and actually stealing a couple. It was a miracle to me.
And so now for the rest of my story:
While the kids are doing their thing there is alot of time for the parents to do their thing, which happens to be cheering and talking. Ok, we have only been in Germany since January and our language skills are growing but not fluent, and then we are in Switzerland, where they speak Schweitzer-Deutsch, not Hoch-Deutsch (High-German)....well it gets better.....one of the first ladies we meet at hockey practice a couple of months ago introduced herself as Fiona.....she is Scottish, but is married to a Frenchman, speaking French in the home, but is also fluent in Swiss-German, which her bi-lingual children speak. Another family recently relocated to Basel from Uraguay, their daughter speaks Spanish and English, no German yet (Vaden says she helps her out sometimes with the German). Another girl on this team is orginally from Chile, but only remembers a little Spanish, her German mother is fluent in German, of course, but also Spanish and English. Needless to say I have plenty of people to practice my language skill with who can understand me in several ways. Well, the miracle comes in to wrap this up with the hockey coach himself, this young sweet man speaks the Schweitzer-Deutsch of Basel, Hoch Deutsch, English, Spanish and Italian. He uses all of his langagues in each practice with his players. How wundervoll it that!! How and where in all the world, except by God's hand, would/could we be placed here to experience this?
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