Start of School

As with all good things, foreign students aren't allowed to just hang out with each other forever. They actually require students to go to school here. Not quite the way it is back home, but "when in Rome" I suppose.

Last Wednesday (I think that time moves faster on this part of the globe or something) we all had to report for our German as Foreign Language placement test. Classes for all of the normal students also started on this day. We were somehow immune to this start date because of this test. We couldn't start going to class because we didn't know which class we would be in. Until we got our test results back the next day, we had no idea what we should do, so we just kind of went to classes as a big mob and sometimes actually had to sit through class. Other times, we were just told to leave, since we weren't sure which class we would be in. I managed to test into the B2 level (they have six levels here from A1 (meaning you don't know the language at all) to C2 (meaning that you are basically a native speaker.)) The classes I have are all fairly boringly named. That is not to say that they aren't interesting and important, it is just to say that there is no fluff attached to the class names (and how interesting can grammar be, anyway?) like we often have in the homeland. They are: Speaking competence, Vocabulary, Writing Competence, Grammar, Listening Comprehension, and German Culture.

Beyond these, I will be taking two more classes, but I am not entirely sure what they are yet. One of my options is German to English business translation. From the one period I have had, it seems like a pretty interesting class. It would also be a fairly difficult class, since I lack a business vocabulary in both languages. But, since we will be mostly proofreading the translations that computers give us, it seems manageable and also very important in case I ever decide that I wanted to do some translating on the side. I would probably have to go to grad school for that, which is a possibility. The problem is that, once I am back living in the States, the demand for German-English translation will drop to about as low as the demand for something can drop (Slightly above "another hole in my head," I would imagine) and I would not want to consider relocating for a job on the side. But, the class is interesting, so I would like to take it, if my studies would allow.

The other class that I am debating over is the C2 version of Writing Competence. We all accidentally attended this class on the first day, not fully understanding the European system (I have an excuse for that. I am not sure what the Europeans were thinking.) During this class, we all had to provide a writing sample based off of a small picture in order to give the Professor something to decide whether we should be in the class or not. My picture was of airplanes at their gates at an airport. I wrote about all of the different times that I was on an airplane. Not really something directly related to the planes (since I never mentioned the airports or the planes at all,) but I figured it was close enough. The next day, I received an email from the professor saying that I could take both the C2 and the B2 class if I wanted. That should also be very difficult and rewarding and I would like to take it as well. I am just afraid that, if I take both of them, my schoolwork will interfere with my traveling the country. As I cannot have classes on Fridays (I have been trying to do that for my whole college career to no avail. I get here and I can't have it any other way, because the only German classes offered are for Chinese students only,) I have been planning on spending lots of time traveling and seeing things that I will not have any other opportunity to see.

And so, the slacker option rears its ugly head. There is a class called Foreign Culture Competence. It is a very high level English class that compares the culture of Germany with the culture of the United States. In all reality, I should probably not take this class. It is just so damn tempting to take a class in a language that I understand very well (I was going to mention something about "completeness" or "understanding all of the words of" but both of those are probably false.) At the very least, the language that I think in, which makes learning that much easier. At this moment I am strongly considering taking both of the hard courses, which is what I should do. I am just afraid that I am going to be jumping in way over my head if I do. I suppose I need to decide before Monday, so I should probably get on that.

At this point, I strongly considered taking a break before talking about what goes on in the classes and the people that I am taking them with. However, I realized that I probably wouldn't get around to it for another week or so if I stopped now, so I have decided to soldier on. Feel free to get up and take a break without me.

The translation class was very interesting. Apparently, the professional translator uses a very expensive version of something like Google translate (which I think I can acquire for free? I will have to check on that) and then proofreading what the program spits out sentence by sentence. Definitely a lot easier than doing it completely by hand, especially if you have to look up more than half of the words to figure out what it means. Speaking competence apparently means that we are have to speak in front of the class a bunch, or something along those lines. All we did was introduce ourselves (we did that in all of our classes, so I won't mention it again) and go over the basics: buy note cards that you can use as flashcards, by the newest version of this dictionary. The older ones will be wrong some of the time and should be thrown out, etc. I can't imagine that every class period will be like that. I guess I will have to wait until next week to see. Vocab just involved just looking over some vocab and the same spiel from before. The first writing competence just went over some sentences. The second one repeated the vocab exercise, but with a different list.

This morning I had grammar and we talked about the sentence. I also got to briefly revisit elementary school, which was fun. The teacher used a bunch of example sentences to illustrate the different parts of the sentence that can exist. She decided to do this by telling a story using two of the easiest names from the class. As my name is fairly easy, it got chosen and I got to break a French girl's heart, causing her to plan revenge against me. I would think that I am mature enough to allow my name to be used in a class example without effect, but I felt really awkward during it. Some things never change, I suppose. After that, we all went to Listening Comprehension. I assumed that this would be the easiest of all of the classes, since, due to the similarities between German and English, I can understand much more of the language than I can speak. It is also much easier to listen, since you don't have to come up with the words yourself. I could not have been more wrong about how easy the class would be. We began by listening to some people talking about the correlations between the weather and health. It might be the fact that weather has its own special vocabulary (outside of the basic kind of stuff) but this seemed torturous to me. It also could have been the fact that the paragraph we were supposed to fill in the verbs on was shoddily copied, making it more difficult than it would have been otherwise. It also could have been the fact that of the 15 or so verbs on the list, I knew less than half of. Hopefully it will be better next week. I would really have to drop down to the B1 level for that class, especially since I am trying to attend the C2 course at the same time. I guess I will have to wait and see how that turns out, as well.

After a brief lunch (well, the eating part took about 5 minutes or so. The waiting in line took more than twenty,) I headed to the library to print my notes for the talk that I was going to give for German Culture on Germany since the reunification. There are only three computers that are hooked up to the printer system (you actually print from a photocopier) and they were all occupied during the half an hour or so I waited. Luckily, I had sketched some very rough notes on a notepad as I was reading stuff. The rest I had to come up with by memory. As I was the first person, I think that I will be granted some slack. The professor didn't seem particularly displeased, so that is good. An interesting point about the copy machines here. They all have usb drives on them, so you could print directly from your jump drive, if you wanted. However, I think that they only read .pdfs and not .docs, so I couldn't print mine. I couldn't find the documents on there, at the very least. I could find some pdfs, so I will have to try that next time. There ends my first full week of class in Germany. Hooray!

Since, in the past, some of you have whined about the lack of people in my entry, here is some information about the people. The other exchange students seem divided into equal parts from China and from France. There are also a couple Belgians and Czechs besides us two Americans. The people are all nice, which is good. However, as the French students choose to converse with each other in their native tongue, I am left out to dry when they are in a group. The Chinese students are the same way, but they have all been here since September and I don't spend much time outside of class with them. Since the Belgians can all speak French, Derrick and I are left either conversing with one another or the Czech students. However, there are only three of them and they are all studying things in addition to German here, so they aren't always around the rest of us as we go from German class to German class. Maybe I will just have to start learning French. Also, there is a girl from South Dakota here that lives on the floor above ours. She is in a class with Derrick. There might be other Americans running around, but I don't know of any. There was a guy in the hallway the other night with a Minnesota State Bulldogs track jacket, but he seemed terribly confused by my questions, so he must have gotten it from somewhere else. I am not sure if that means Duluth or some other university in the state. It was odd, at the very least. There was also a guy in the union yesterday who was decked out in Twins garb. I was caught off-guard at the beginning and wasn't quite ready to ask him about it before he walked away. Perhaps he will wear it again.

Germans? Do you honestly think that there are Germans in Germany? The truth of the matter, is that I don't know any. I am vaguely acquainted with a couple that spend Thursday evenings in the International Center (Inter-cultural meeting is what it is literally, I would call it an international center in English) playing foosball. However, as with the other people that I have talked to there, I haven't gotten good contact information for anyone, so I haven't been able to follow up on anything. Perhaps I should do that, the next time I go. For those of you who are familiar with foosball, these German guys are definitely better than anyone at Sawbill. Hopefully it will be good practice for the fall when I return. I can't imagine that I could have possibly forgotten anything from this post. I apologize for the length and will try to space it out in the future. Maybe I will remember something I forgot and will have to post it tomorrow. Bis später!

Marc