As much as I will be teased about having a field with grazing cattle as my backyard, I don’t care. I like them! I enjoy sitting by my window sipping coffee in the mornings and just watching them. There’s something very peaceful and calming about it. From my bedroom window I see only grass, trees, flowers, and cows. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Perhaps it is a similar Anblick to that which my German ancestors had so long ago? Oh, happy German cows… :)
There are many things about living in Germany that make me feel like I’ve stepped back through time. Some of these things are very subtle, others not so much. Obviously, the buildings give you that feeling. There’s also the fact that there aren’t many microwaves, garbage disposals are nowhere to be found, and many Germans don’t use things like dryers or dish washing machines. (Yes, I realize hanging my clothes to dry would be easier, more European, and cheaper, but there is nowhere in my room to easily do that.) The streets have farmers markets and bakeries around every corner, and something about German culture and behaviors simply seems old fashioned. I’m not able to pinpoint many of these differences, but they’re there.
This week has gone by very slowly and uneventfully for me. I haven’t met up with any of my German friends all week (schedule conflicts), and my classes have been making me want to rip my hair out. My literature class, for example, consists of an hour and a half of discussing a chapter from a German novel. All that time for ONE chapter. My German vocabulary doesn’t allow me to discuss things for that long without repeating myself over and over. In fact, I don’t think I could do it in English either. It only makes me more frustrated that I can’t hear the professor half the time. She barely speaks above a whisper and has a very weak and unsteady voice. It’s as if she is going to burst into tears at any moment. I don’t know... Then of course there are all the other foreign exchange students. Some of them have very good German vocabularies and grammar, but I can’t understand them because of their accents! I have to try really hard to understand German when it is spoken by anyone other than Germans or other Americans. zB: I get extremely irritated with the girls from Poland and The Czech Republic that speak WAY too softly. If you think I speak softly sometimes, just listen to these girls!
My history class is hard to follow because we have no book or handouts during class. He doesn’t do a Powerpoint either. He just stands up there and guides the class in discussion over…not really sure? It’s impossible for me to follow without anything to look at or read. I’m a visual learner, so this format is difficult for me even if it were taught auf Englisch. It takes every ounce of willpower in me to focus and keep myself from drifting off into my own thoughts, planning where I would like to travel, doodling, etc.
Half of the time I’m intrigued by my speech training course for international students, and the other half of the time I’m almost bored to tears. We spend too much time on warming up our voices and preparing for speech in my opinion. Every class is the EXACT same thing for the first 20 minutes. It is very tempting arrive late just so I don’t have to go through the warm up exercises. The nice part of the class is when I am able to tie the lesson into the things I learned in American Phonetics. I also soak up any speech therapy related terms he throws at us. Many of them are the same/ very similar, but it still makes me happy. I have already discovered several things that I have been mispronouncing in German thanks to that class. I guess all in all, the “speech therapy” class is my favorite despite the fact that he moves too slowly through some of the material.
At least my long week is going to end on a fun note. Tomorrow I’m going to a small town near Kaiserslautern. I was invited to visit Monica’s hometown Saturday-Sunday! This is exciting for me because it will be my first visit to a German home! Her parents don’t speak a word of English, so it will provide me with more German practice. Well, it will actually FORCE me to speak German, but you know. lol. I wish I could hang out and travel with Germans all the time. I enjoy spending time with them far more than spending time with my fellow exchange students...
