My best friend back home will feel vindicated. My ever so slight mid-western accent is causing all sorts of fun in learning German. Bag, Tag, Lag, and Jag are attacking me. According to my professor it’s fairly common and is considered a dialect which is an interesting factoid, but irritating nonetheless.
I really enjoy my class. They are young and really down to earth. German actually makes a lot of sense so I think once I get a good grasp on pronunciation I will be on the road to getting it. An issue I am having is that some of the sounds are American to my ears but others are slightly Arabic sounding…some of German’s ch’s sound a lot like, but not quite Arabic’s kh’s. It gets me into trouble.
I actually went touring around a little today. Mainly I took a lot of pictures of my walk to school and then I climbed the hill to look at a crumbling watch tower. This place is so beautiful. I can’t even describe it. It’s cold, but the air is clean. The water tastes good. You can see the bottom of their river. I love looking out over the tops of the houses.
Tomorrow I am going to go with Klaus after classes and watch his dress rehearsal. I’m pretty excited. He LOVES being in theatre and singing. I am going to bring my camera and get pictures of him!
Jutta should be back on Thursday from her trip to the spa/clinic. I hope they helped her hips a lot. She is so sweet. Key should be back on Friday so I will finally get to meet him. From all accounts he is a really cool kid.
On Friday I hope to have some really fantastic pictures, I am going to climb (seriously climb) the short, but extremely steep hill at the edge of town and take pictures of the palace and pictures overlooking the entire town. It’s gorgeous up there. I went my first day in town, but my camera putzed out. I can’t wait to go, but I am saving up to buy the medical evacuation team needed to finish once my body gives out about halfway up
.
Next Wednesday we go on my first class trip. We are going to spend five days in Berlin for a conference. I was talking to Frau Merchant and she was looking online and the Berlin Film Festival is going on at the same time. I may look into seeing some of the films or going to some of the seminars…I don’t know. I know I am going to be taking lots of pictures of Berlin.
I also found out today that we are kind of expected to do something for Spring Break. Our host families need the break and hell, we are in Europe…I am debating going to Prague and going to Auschwi…the death camp. I can go anywhere in Europe also. I will have to do some web browsing. I may do Prague and somewhere else…I have quite a bit of time and all this stuff is so close together and train fares are actually really cheap so I can do a bunch of things if I can budget a small amount of money and then time it right.
One of my biggest problems here of late is that I am beyond exhausted. I go to bed around ten every night. I get up twice during the night, and then around 7 am I am up. I don’t fully understand what’s going on aside form all the travelling I have done in the past 14-15 days. I only hope it calms down so I can go do stuff in the evening without kicking my own butt.
Today I bought a couple more warm shirt/sweaters. I think another thing I will do in Berlin is find a cheap store…like a Wal-mart and buy three decent sweaters. This town is very small so it is hard to find good sweater shirts. I can find sweater jackets, but I have a very nice coat I bought myself in Frankfurt. I need my arms to stop being frozen.
Well, with any luck, I will soon be able to post my entire blog in German. Look out for that edition, until then I am going to keep climbing hills, eating cheese and bread, and living, reading, and writing the German language.
I really enjoy my class. They are young and really down to earth. German actually makes a lot of sense so I think once I get a good grasp on pronunciation I will be on the road to getting it. An issue I am having is that some of the sounds are American to my ears but others are slightly Arabic sounding…some of German’s ch’s sound a lot like, but not quite Arabic’s kh’s. It gets me into trouble.
I actually went touring around a little today. Mainly I took a lot of pictures of my walk to school and then I climbed the hill to look at a crumbling watch tower. This place is so beautiful. I can’t even describe it. It’s cold, but the air is clean. The water tastes good. You can see the bottom of their river. I love looking out over the tops of the houses.
Tomorrow I am going to go with Klaus after classes and watch his dress rehearsal. I’m pretty excited. He LOVES being in theatre and singing. I am going to bring my camera and get pictures of him!
Jutta should be back on Thursday from her trip to the spa/clinic. I hope they helped her hips a lot. She is so sweet. Key should be back on Friday so I will finally get to meet him. From all accounts he is a really cool kid.
On Friday I hope to have some really fantastic pictures, I am going to climb (seriously climb) the short, but extremely steep hill at the edge of town and take pictures of the palace and pictures overlooking the entire town. It’s gorgeous up there. I went my first day in town, but my camera putzed out. I can’t wait to go, but I am saving up to buy the medical evacuation team needed to finish once my body gives out about halfway up
.Next Wednesday we go on my first class trip. We are going to spend five days in Berlin for a conference. I was talking to Frau Merchant and she was looking online and the Berlin Film Festival is going on at the same time. I may look into seeing some of the films or going to some of the seminars…I don’t know. I know I am going to be taking lots of pictures of Berlin.
I also found out today that we are kind of expected to do something for Spring Break. Our host families need the break and hell, we are in Europe…I am debating going to Prague and going to Auschwi…the death camp. I can go anywhere in Europe also. I will have to do some web browsing. I may do Prague and somewhere else…I have quite a bit of time and all this stuff is so close together and train fares are actually really cheap so I can do a bunch of things if I can budget a small amount of money and then time it right.
One of my biggest problems here of late is that I am beyond exhausted. I go to bed around ten every night. I get up twice during the night, and then around 7 am I am up. I don’t fully understand what’s going on aside form all the travelling I have done in the past 14-15 days. I only hope it calms down so I can go do stuff in the evening without kicking my own butt.
Today I bought a couple more warm shirt/sweaters. I think another thing I will do in Berlin is find a cheap store…like a Wal-mart and buy three decent sweaters. This town is very small so it is hard to find good sweater shirts. I can find sweater jackets, but I have a very nice coat I bought myself in Frankfurt. I need my arms to stop being frozen.
Well, with any luck, I will soon be able to post my entire blog in German. Look out for that edition, until then I am going to keep climbing hills, eating cheese and bread, and living, reading, and writing the German language.
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