Why the heck is this post so long?

To start, I’ve a few messages for people back home:

To all of those reading this blog:  Blogger has been freaking out at me for the last two blogs and the formatting isn't working properly; I can't use any more italics, boldface, or underling, so you'll have to forgive me if some of the sentences seem to lack a little umph.


To Lauren Bejzak: Happy birthday! Sorry I didn’t post on your wall or send you a message or something. I thought a tribute here might be a little more welcome than another notification on Facebook. Please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong though.

To the cast and crew of Pennsbury High School’s “Mikado”: Though I am thoroughly enjoying my time here in Deutschland, I am sorry that I couldn’t be there for your show. I have no doubt though, that it was absolutely incredible; like everything you guys put together. Enjoy the rest of your performances, and break a leg!

To all those who have sent me messages to which I have not responded: know that I have read them and I thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated them! I have simply lacked the time to write you a worthy response. Hopefully I’ll be able to manage a few this weekend (“hopefully” being the key word).

… Flying back to Germany…

This week was a ton of fun (as usual), if a bit nerve-wracking.

Monday was fairly non-descript. I spoke with my German teacher and the exchange coordinator here about some options for improving my grammar. Then I went to German class, and then to English class, where we got our grammar tests back.

Minus two. Ahhhh well. Nobody’s perfect.

Tuesday was also relatively non-descript. I left McKay at home rather than lug him around (big mistake there), but Volleyball and Math went well.

Especially since Math was canceled.

After school, I went to one of the school clubs for the first time: UNESCO AG.

Now, earlier in the day, I had to find out when and where this club met, which means I had to ask someone-- auf Deutsch. To find this out I went to the teachers room, where everyone kept telling me to wait for the UNESCO teacher, and that “Die AG findet heute bestimmt statt”.  I knew all of the words in that sentence. Why then, did it make absolutely no sense? The answer is that the above translated as “The club definitely finds the city today”.

… I was under the impression Oldenburg had already been discovered. A while ago.

After consulting my dictionary a few hours later, I discovered yet another important word to have under your belt: “stattfinden”—to occur or to happen. People weren’t telling me the club was finding the city. They were telling me the club was definitely going to meet.

Stupid compound words that make no sense… grumble grumble …

When I finally got to UNESCO in the afternoon, the only people there were a couple of 4th/5th graders, a sixth grader, an eighth grader, and the teacher.

And then there was me.

Once again, I introduced myself, gave a short bio, and was asked a few questions by the students. One boy asked a question and, right as I started to answer, the teacher stepped in saying “you need to speak a little slower”.

The boy then proceeded to speak as follows:

“Woooooooord.”

Paaaaaaaaaause.

“Wooooooooooord”

Paaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaause.

”Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooord”.

We all had a good laugh at that one, but I interrupted in order to finish answering the kid’s question.
Not to toot my own horn or anything, but that surprised the teacher rather greatly I think. She didn’t expect me to be able to understand something that was spoken so quickly.

Ha.

Haha.

Haha.

Ha.

Ha!

Ok, so understanding what a 5th grader says is probably not the greatest linguistic challenge in the world, but small successes precede great ones, so I’ll take ‘em gladly when they come.

To continue, UNESCO is basically a world awareness/community service club for the younger grades. They talk about what’s going on which part of the world, and how it affects them, and how, maybe, they could help.

Fantastically enough, we talked about the revolutions going on in Northern Africa.
Now, I love Germany and all things German, but I am equally fascinated by Arabic, northern Africa, and the Middle East. I found the opportunity to learn about this area through German eyes ridiculously awesome. I think the teacher was a bit concerned how I would react at first—the US is, unfortunately, not known for respecting this area of the world a whole lot. That is something I would like change as I go forward—our country’s perspective of the Middle East.

Anyway, while there, we received several papers about the middle east; culture, people, food, history, that sort of thing. Luckily, the material was like those “Eyewitness” books we used to read in Elementary school, so the grammar wasn’t too hard for me to understand--- I just had to spend a lot of time looking words up.

Btdubs, if you ever plan on attempting language immersion, invest in an iPod touch and a good dictionary for it. I had the iPod already, but I bought a dictionary to put on it for about $20 before I left in January.

Best purchase I ever made. Hands down.

The benefit of having this setup is that not only is it easier and less time consuming to look words up, it is a lot less conspicuous than constantly leafing through a dictionary.

It’s also a lot lighter than lugging a dictionary around.

In my experience, most people in Germany have at least a rudimentary understanding of English, and are dying to try it out. If they see an English speaker struggling with some German, they are more than happy to act as translator for a while.


This would be perfectly fine (I really do appreciate how willing people are to help!!), but it makes learning German a little harder. I, for one, need to hear, say, read and write a word before it really sticks. When everyone is acting as a translator, kind as it is, it makes learning the words more challenging for me--- and there are far too many words to learn for me to accept another challenge!!! The iPod-dictionary is a lifesaver. I’ve literally used it about 100 times a day since I arrived.

At least.

As in most parts of the world, after Tuesday comes Wednesday, and of all the school days this week, Wednesday was probably the most interesting.

I started the day with Physics.


Yups. I still don’t really understand what we’re doing. I know we’re working with Magnetic fields, with resistors, with volts, current, circuits and systems, but I don’t really understand what it is we’re supposed to be learning and understanding from these experiments.


I’m not alone though, any time someone from physics asks how it’s going, I tell them “I understand the German, but not the physics”, and they laugh.

They don’t understand the physics either, and they’re learning it in their native language!

That being said, I’m not sure the boat would be any less sinkable if this class were in English…

Sorry Dad: There is just no way I’m going to be an engineer. Don’t keel over on me: You’ve got still got Morgan!!

And I’m certain Dr. L wouldn’t mind if you chatted with Sara about magnetic fields, integrals, and derivatives every once in a while.


After physics, I usually don’t have another class until after the lunch break. The teacher I have for Politics seems to be sick an awful lot; I hope she gets better soon!!

This week, though I still didn’t have Politics, I did have another class before the lunch break.

German class.

In the seventh grade.

I got there a little early—wasn’t certain how long it would take me to find the right room—and all the students thought, at first, that I was their “Vertraetungslehrerin”—their substitute teacher.

Then I told them I was an exchange student. They were then convinced for several long minutes that I was lost.

I was forced to repeatedly promise them that no I really was in the right place, and yes I really was saying what I meant to say. When the teacher finally came, the class practically knocked her over in their effort to figure out why the heck there was an 18 year old American exchange student in their seventh grade German class.

Not gonna lie, I was starting to share their curiosity; I’m not big on causing a ruckus or being the center of attention.


And at that point, I was definitely both.


After another round of introductions, I discovered that, at this point in time, the class is reading and working with a book, not learning grammar, as I had been told.

Well, at least the book is interesting; something about the Incas.

It turned out alright; the teacher told me I was more than welcome to join the class on a regular basis if I wished. She made the excellent point that, since it was only seventh grade, the German spoken there would probably be a lot easier than the German spoken in the higher grades, where all my other classes are. It’s a fantastic way to solidify and expand my vocabulary base, as opposed to working in the lofty treetops that are the Oberstufe classes.

After German was lunch, and then theater. Basically, I was super lost in Theater. This is the only class where I am still drowning in incomprehension. I misunderstood an aspect of the directions that were given, but didn’t realize that until we were on stage. I tried to inconspicuously clarify things through the girl next to me, but… well, you know me.

Much as I try, “inconspicuous” is not really my forte.

The teacher was understandably a bit miffed with me, as she had asked earlier if I understood everything, which I thought I did. Anyway, I eventually understood what we were supposed to do, and apologized for my misinterpretation after class. After explaining what had me tripped up, my teacher seemed to forgive me.

Theater auf Deutsch is tough; there’s really just no getting around that. The only thing for it right now, is time, and that in turn requires a bit of patience on my part.

Thursday was better. We talked about a new story in English, and my teacher asked me about the new books I’d bought.

Oh, sorry. Forgot to mention that earlier. I bought Fussball-Alarm and Elmar Tuesday afternoon. My English teacher asked if I had read any books in German. I told her I had started Harry Potter, but didn’t get very far.

She literally gasped when I said that. And several people looked at me like I was crazy.

Apparently the grammar there is wicked hard.

Um… thanks for the FYI??

Because of their reaction, I went into the city at the first possible opportunity to buy a book or two. The next time someone asks what I’m reading, I can avoid the awkward staring bit.

Except, I’m reading German at a third grade level. So maybe that whole staring thing won’t completely disappear.

Back to English class though. Because the book is called “Fussball- Alarm”—soccer alarm—people made the assumption that I really like soccer.

Wow. What a leap.

There had been a Bayern Muenchen game the night before, so we talked about that too.

As it turns out, nobody in Oldenburg really likes Bayern Muenchen because they’re really really good.

I don’t like them because Mark van Bommel plays there. As far as I’m concerned, his red card is what cost Holland the world cup title!!

On the brighter side though, Bayern Muenchen is somewhat redeemed by the fact that Arjen Robben (another member of Holland’s national squad) also plays there. And he’s freaking awesome.

The game was made even more interesting by the fact that Wesley Sneijder—yet another member of the Holland national team-- was there too: playing for the other side!

It was a good game, but I had school the next day so I only got to see the first half.

After English/soccer, I went to Math, where were supposed to do something with something that I didn’t understand at all. I tried a bit, then gave up and read some more from Fussball-Alarm.

I know. I felt guilty, but there were kids who actually needed to learn the Math, whereas I need to learn the German. I didn’t want to commandeer my math teacher for the whole period (because that’s what it would have taken probably) when he could’ve been helping the rest of the class, who’ll need this for their Abitur next year.

It’s not like I sat there and went on facebook for an hour and a half. I read some more pages from my book, studied some vocab, looked over some grammar, and listened to the conversations around me. I made good use of the time, I promise!

After Math came German: biggest success of the week. I spoke in class.

--Cue the hallelujah chorus please.

We were examining another poem, and looking for different schemes and tropes. There was a big long list of them all in our book, and almost every single one had the same name as in English. The other girls in my group were chatting about this and that, but I didn’t understand enough of what was said to turn it into a coherent story, so I started examining the poem.

I found an oxymoron in line 6. Snow is not warm, and sand in not usually cold. Oxymoron ahoy!!

The only bad part about this is that the kids in my group didn’t believe I had found something at first. Yups. Like the seventh graders, they at first thought that I must be mistaken.

Upon further examination though, they saw I was right. So I presented the oxymoron to the class, where everyone was slightly stunned that I spoke to the class as a whole.

Then my finding was challenged. The other groups had it labeled as “inversion” rather than oxymoron. Their justification?

Line 6 was used in the book as an example for inversion.

…There were 3 other people in my group OK? I was the only non-native German speaker. And, in the end, the teacher said my idea was also correct.

After German we had our lunch break, and then Art, where we discussed the Youth-Centers that we had designed.

Someone pointed mine out, saying they found the shape of the building really interesting and unusual. I then had to raise my hand and claim ownership of the piece, and listen to my art teacher tell me how, yes it was good, but there were only three big rooms, which wasn’t organized enough for all the stuff I had going on.

At this point, of course, I had a huge frog in my throat, and could do little more than mumble and nod with a deer-in-headlights expression.

Oh yes. It was a very interesting art class.

Friday morning I went to the 7th grade German class again, but they had a test, so I read some more from Fussball- Alarm.

In Physics we ate cake, and –

Yes, we ate cake.

And then our teacher showed us something with several pieces of bulky equipment and a dot of light. Again, I’m not certain what the physics were, but it was pretty cool lights show.

After physics was History, and I did bring McKay this time. But, of course, Friday was the one day I didn’t need him.

Go figure.

After Geschichte I went home and kind of chilled about the house a bit. It was nice; the week (as you can see from all the writing I’ve done) was a bit hectic.

I will continue a bit into what we did yesterday simply because it was so much fun, and so interesting. Usually I would wait until next week’s blog, but in this one case? I’ll make an exception.

Yesterday we lounged about the house in the morning, but in the afternoon my host mom and I went to Dangast, a town on the coast of the Jadebusen sound. I had been there three years ago with my host family for the three week exchange but, because my German was still so limited at that point, we spoke entirely in English, and I asked merely for some German definitions of the more crucial terms.

Dangast was where I learned the word for “Rainbow”.

That first exchange trip is a different story though. The point I wanted to make was that, last time I was there, almost everything was spoken in English.

But this time around? It was all German. The only bit of English used was to translate the word for “Port-city”.

Granted, my German wasn’t perfect, but I was able to clearly and effectively communicate every point I wanted to. This wasn’t a small success for me: it was a big one. Going to Dangast, even though it was a little grey and rainy, was a really fantastic way to spend my Saturday. It was… a very interesting experience to see just how far I’ve come with the language. Something about being in that same spot, eating a bit of cake and drinking a cup of coffee at the same café, it was remarkably easy to recall that day in June, three years ago, when my host family had first shown me around the town. Sunny and warm, with just a gentle breeze, but hardly a word of German from me. This time around, it was grey, cold, fairly windy, and just a bit rainy, but hardly a word of English from me.

One thing I learned from Physics is that supposedly there is no pot of gold waiting at the end of a rainbow, but after Dangast yesterday? I beg to differ.

I’m heading out for coffee with some friends in a bit, and I’m going to attempt to reclaim my packages from the Post Office tomorrow, but other than that there’s not much planned for this week.

Over and out,

Shannon