What do you do with a German degree?

MCrosky : Johnny, what can you make outta this? [hands him a piece of paper]
Johnny : This? Why I could make a hat, or a brooch, a pterodactyl. . . (from Airplane!)

There aren't many occasions where my degree is immediately applicable or useful. Most recently, I got to use my training to provide translation for the bits of the Indiana Jones trilogy where the Nazis yell at various characters in the movie (my favorite part in Raiders is when Indy's trying to put on an undersized uniform and gets confronted by an officer).

However, God throws me the occasional curveball and I get to step into practice. One such occasion was the summer of 1998, when I was with a group of students from Boston in Warsaw, Poland. We had just spent three weeks in the mountains for a lingual-cultural exchange, and were headed back to the capital to take part in a European-wide leadership training camp. In exchange for letting us be part of it, the camp's organizers asked those of us who were leading the group to step in and help out as much as we could, which we agreed to wholeheartedly.

There were students from everywhere in Europe from Azerbaijan to Russia, Norway to Italy and virtually every country in between. That made logistics a challenge, especially since the only common language everyone had was English. Most countries had English-speakers among their delegates, or people who could speak English and translate for their friends. It all was working and flowing until the students got paired up with leaders who would serve as their mentors.

Each student got to meet up with a pastor of sorts, and the pairing up went rather well until they came across the group from Hungary. A few of them spoke English, but not the young man they brought with them. And there was no male leader who could speak Hungarian (nor was there any female leader, either). The language he could speak? GERMAN!!!! And I was the only leader available who could speak German.

Cool, huh?

There are other cool stories from this conference, which I'll share in detail at some point. Suffice it to say, I've done more with my degree than make quirky origami projects from it....