Bucolic St Gallen and the pigs

Though I haven't been posting as often as I would like to, there has been lots going on and lots to tell you. Unusually, time has become a bit of a luxury. I have finally been convinced by you know who to take a German course. It is an intensive course, which means it runs daily and I have to plan all my work around it. Anyway, I am in my second week of the five week course and am learning all sorts of interesting things, like adjective endings in the Dativ and the Akkusativ. Not. I love English. I keep wondering what I did in my last life to deserve the fate of not having German as my native language and having to learn English instead. Ah well... The grass is always greener, as they say. What I really wanted to tell you is that a few weeks ago, we visited St Gallen. Husband has some friends there and we stayed with them. Unfortunately, I left my camera at a friend's place and didn't have it with me on the trip, so I'm not able to post any pictures of the quaint, little city here. I am not sure why but I really enjoyed my stay there. I kept marvelling at the old houses, the window boxes and the pretty countryside. I guess, I must have been marvelling pretty obviously, because Husband's friend commented, 'It's bucolic, isn't it?' To which I responded 'What is bucolic?' Though, part of me wanted to correct him with, 'You mean beautiful' and another part of me wanted to pretend I knew what he was going on about. I am after all the native English speaker, English instructor and all-round English expert. After our walk, said friend pulled out his mega-huge edition of the English dictionary, which contained a definition I couldn't argue with. Bucolic, as a noun, is a country person or a short poem about country life. Bucolic as an adjective, can be used to describe country scenery or rustic countryside. I am very pleased to have this new word in my clearly not-as-developed-as-I-thought vocabulary. I am starting to wonder how I ever did without it, bucolic seems to fit a lot where I am. The other thing I did was go shopping and I am still not sure how this happened but everything I bought, in some way pertained to pigs. I found it very bizarre when I looked at my purchases at the end of the day. Not very sensitive, I know, with all the negative pig things going on at the moment. Nevertheless, below you will see my new piggy friends. The first one (moving clockwise), a stuffed toy pig was bought for someone else but I can't give it away. That has never happened to me before, so I am taking it as a sign that it was meant to be mine. Notice the little black bird on its hind quarter? Too cute. The second is a pork cookbook called 'Schwein & Sohn' titled 'Pork & Son' in English but I find the German title so much better. It is an award winning French cookbook filled with amazingly photographed recipes and nostalgic stories. And what is even more freakily coincidental, is that the book cover matches exactly with my stuffed pig's nose. Must be a sign that everything I cook from here is going to be a crowd pleaser. I can't wait to cook from it. In the third and fourth picture you can see what we have named our 'Tetsuya' piggy bank. We are saving up to eat at Tetsuya's the next time we are back in Sydney. Let's hope there is enough in there by our next trip or it may just be a shrimp or schwein on the barbie for us. Which wouldn't be bad either.