Day 4
Wedsday January 13
I woke up first and went to the toilet by myself. I feel so foalish saying that, but the human toilets aren't made with stallions in mind. I went down stairs and started our coffee and set out the cups and turned on the TV so I could listen and watch something while I cleaned up under some stuff.
The electricity pipes have small funnels that technology plugs into and I made sure to clean them out very well with soap and water because we don't want them to clog and for the technology to stop working.
It took a long time for the funnels to dry completely so I had almost everything unplugged by the time I was done and I was very proud of myself for having done such a good job.
I went to wake up the foals and Blueberry before I nuzzle Amber awake and she kissed me, which was nice. The foals used the bathroom and were downstairs promptly and watching TV like good foals and Blueberry was on the computer talking English with the computer.
Amber made a small salad for each of us with oats and berries we'd bought at Walls Mart and we had a can of tomato sauce as our drink again.
We talked about what there was to do when it was so cold and since we didn't really know anypony, person yet and we couldn't speak English well we wondered why we had rushed to come over here. It was summer in Equestria and it's winter here.
We talked about fun winter activities like building snow ponies but there wasn't enough snow and it wasn't right for that. We talked about ice skating and that sounded fun. But we didn't bring ice skates so we'd have to see what they had as far as sports stores here and if they even had them or any selection.
There was a knock on our door and we were very excited to meet Melody but it was Lynn, giving us another bible. He talked some but realized we didn't understand him and he was a bit frustrated before he left our doorstep and returned home.
I put the bible with the others and we decided that we were going to have enough kindling to start two dozen fires before the season was over at the rate they gave these books away.
But that's just a joke, burning books is wrong. We can resell them to a book trader for a few more bits on our credit card. The foals played with their toys and there was another knock on our door and this time Amber answered the door.
The woman was tall and her skin was very pale, like most of the people we'd met, but I had only just noticed that she was pretty, for a human. She had a nice figure and her hips were very nice, too.
Amber welcomed Melody in and Melody giggled when Amber took her coat off with her magic and hung it by the door on the hat rack. We introduced ourselves with our earth names and shook her hand.
We all sat around the table while I guess she introduced herself and what she did before she took our new notebooks and gave us pencils and lessons for their letters.
We did pretty well considering the difference between our languages. Numbers and letters are both important, but so different! I knew they used different sounds than we do but to have them written so simply yet convey such meaning is almost amazing.
They have a way to quote feelings without over accents or using numbers to convey the importance… it's becoming a beautiful language to us and Melody has a sweet way of speaking.
We've taught her a basic greeting in Equestrian and she took too it amazingly fast, she even nickered at the end! I didn't know they could do that, so I guess I'm becoming fond of her.
She studied with us as a family for two hours before we taught her how to say goodbye and at first she said ‘best lying’ and it was funny because it wasn't even close to what we told her to say.
She said it right and bowed to us before she left and the foals were excited to see her again but she said that she has a thought and wanted to surprise us so we were all excited to find out what was going to happen.
Amber and I bundled up and left to downtown again while the children went to the park to play since it was the warmest day yet.
We walked to the bridge and looked over the trails at the river and wondered if we were allowed to fish, because a fish for dinner sounded nice. Eating meat is a great source of protein and since they don't serve hay over the counter here we need to get it from somewhere.
We saw a few people out and greeted them as we passed in English and one nice woman started a conversation with us but we had to tell her we were still learning to speak and she said she wished she could speak Equestrian.
Amber and I had the same thought at the same time, that we should start a language class! We'd have to set done things up with our helpers, but language classes were always in demand and we could learn at the same time.
We walked over the bridge and came to another city that was right across the river and found a boardwalk with several businesses, restaurants they looked like, and a real movie theatre! We went in and the theatre was a large as Trottingham City hall.
We could tell the movies were very different than ours just by the cut outs! So much implied action and adventure got us both excited to watch a movie, even if we couldn't understand it. They use a twenty four hour clock here, like a couple other places on our earth, so it was easy to figure out when we first got here. Amber did the math.
We decided to come back in two days because it would be closer to the socializing times. They call it a weekend here on human earth. As though weeks end? They just cycle around the calendar like the sun through the sky.
Having a sun and moon that rely on physics makes for a very different calendar and time system so it'll make a great experience teaching our friends the difference of human and our world calendars.
It doesn't even feel right saying or implying that Equestria is as important as it feels. There are as many nations here as are on our world but it's just feeling different now that we're here.
We made our way back to our home and stopped by Subway to say hello to our friends and this time we shared a few human words and taught the cooks or words for lettuce and tomatoes and cheese. They didn't do well at all and I can't tell them how insulted we were at what they did say about our sons…
But it wasn't intentional so we forgive them, but won't be teaching them food in Equestrian for a little while.
We got back home and there was another bible and a child dictionary on our doorstop so we took it in and put it in the bookshelf and ate canned goods for lunch.
The children hadn't seen anyone at the park and had become too cold to play for long so they'd come home earlier. We shared our idea with Blueberry and he loved it and said he'd do some research.
Blueberry is our Stratonet and internet expert so we had him start looking into classes and everything we found and could understand seemed to say that it was cheap, easy, and didn't need any experience with teaching to teach!
We called Written Letter and told her about the tutor and our plans and after done conversing with our helpers they said they'd get back to us with the information and we spent time talking about our day so far. We told our children about teaching some people hello and goodbye in Equestrian, as well as a few vegetable words. And tomato, that’s a fruit but I don’t expect everyone to know that.
Amber and I spent time writing a language plan and she used her magic to write while I tried to race her with my mouth writing and we were about the same, but I really think she slows down for me because I know unicorns are better at writing than the other tribes since they don’t have to use their tongues and teeth to move the pencil.
We got a call back from our helpers pretty quick and they told us they couldn’t set up a language class with us because we have a lot of paperwork to file still and to do a language class we’d need to find people that were interested first and that would take a lot of time and surveys and the like so we thanked them and hung up and wrote a letter, with Blueberry’s help, and put it on our Facebook for our friends to see.
We invited them to our house to study some English and teach them Equestrian. The spelling was wrong in parts, but we wanted it to be that way a little to encourage them to come over and help us.
We got cleaned up nicely and the children put on their dress clothes with their saddles and Amber and I put on some makeup and I polished her horn a little with my file kit, which doesn’t work very well for hooves, by the way, and we waited.
It was about an hour later when the first knock came at the door. We thought it was going to be Lynn or Monica again, but it turned out to be a friend from the Subway and his woman friend and they greeted us warmly and we welcomed them in Equestrian and they were very happy to hear us speaking it.
We sat down and another knock at the door was a small group of three people that wanted to learn some Equestrian and within the hour of six o’clock there were nearly fifteen people that we had greeted and were mostly talking about the weather and a sport called hockey that was very similar to stickball on ice!
We started with telling everyone that it was nice to meet them in English then we split up our roles and Amber and Blueberry started with basic words in English and I would say them in Equestrian and the foals would take turns spelling the words in Equestrian and since we didn’t have a chalkboard Amber used her magic and the humans were, rapt, if that’s the right word, with attention as she spelled hello and goodbye, how are you, we are ponies, and you’re my friend.
We really wanted a chalkboard and asked if anyone had an extra and some people said they didn’t have one, but would get us a big one! They started a discussion of how much to spend and where to get one and we listened, raptly, while they talked and learned a little about places to shop.
They have all kinds of shops for everything, which is pretty common, but these humans have warehouses full of shopping stuff so anything that anyone could ever need is gettable!
We continued with our class and learned a lot of new phrases and wrote them in our study books and the people that brought notebooks or computers of their own were taking notes and pictures of us the whole time and we spent some time letting them practice talking in Equestrian, too.
By the end we learned that humans are very fast learners and can make proper sounds and convey some emotion when they speak with nickers and a little winney now and then, too. They speak well enough, but when they tried to write it was terrible. Haha, they wrote the word friend and it looked like the start of a water spell in Unicorn, Amber said.
They didn’t understand why it was funny but we made merry for a while before we said our goodbyes, in Equestrian, and then joined in the livingroom and talked about how exciting it was to have had such a great turn out to what was supposed to be a little study session. We thanked our friends on Facebook and ate supper, but didn’t eat a lot because we were so excited about what had happened and the friends we’d made!
We didn’t mind practicing more English while we waited for bedtime and then we put the children to bed and spent some time, just Amber and me, watching TV and we found a show about hockey and it was stickball on ice! We had to play a game and show these humans we ponies are serious about our sports, too!
Amber was really more into summer sports like Hoofball and Rugby, but we’d cross that road when we came to it. We nuzzled each other for a while and got into the mood and made sure to turn everything off before we went to bed. Must have been three minutes, another awesome night!