my major adjustment

We’re in Germany. The grocery store is foreign, the yellow lines on the road have disappeared, everyone has a red tile roof, and the biggest thing freaking me out is my new iPhone.

See, I should have paid attention when people started calling them “smart phones.” Apparently you have to be smarter than the phone to use it–or in my case, you have to speak German.

In order to be a Good Wife, I let Jason and his jet lag hit the hay early last week and took it upon myself to “surprise” him by programming both our new iPhones.

Unfortunately, I told our phones that we live in Germany. Since people in Germany speak German and my phone is too stupid to know that I’m a recent transplant, it welcomed me with a very German salutation. (Then again, it might have been swearing; it was all Greek to me.)

For the first four days all my texts came and went in German, my browser was in German, my facebook account? German. I would have loved to get in on all that “app” business but it’s ALL IN GERMAN.

Determined to fix this problem myself (since Jason has been kind of busy), I went to two different places and all they could do was stare and ply me with subtle answers like, “Seriously? If you can’t figure this out then you’re not worthy of a smart phone.”

I am, by the way. Worthy. I’ve stood by my broken Motorola for way longer than my contract asked me to.

After four days of confusion, my husband finally came to my rescue last night and rebaptised our phones.

The worst part? I spent thirty minutes of driving through beautiful German countryside trying to figure out how to use my new camera app so I could take pictures of the beautiful German countryside.

Sometimes technology really defeats the purpose.