When you're learning a foreign language from a textbook, the sentences you learn have to include only words you've learned up to that point and incorporate the current chapter's vocabulary words heavily. Consequently, in high school German I class, one of the paragraphs we learned, when translated into English, read like this: "We went on a picnic. Everyone brought food. No one brought drinks. Dieter called us idiots. Naturally, he was right. We knew that, too."
Nearly 32 years later, I still remember that tale of the poorly planned picnic. People often referred to each other as sick, lazy, and tired fairly often in that textbook, as well. I often wondered how our German I class would have fared in Germany, with these disjointed memories of the language standing out so prominently.
