It would have taken about 2 weeks to finish up my Buch 3 German class but we found out this past Tuesday that it was not to be. It was pretty cozy: just Pascal from Switzerland, Paul from Scottland, Fomiko from Japan, little me, and a rare appearance from semi-pro soccer player Vally from Greece were in the classroom. Suddenly Fomiko had her baby (only 3kg, named Natalie) and that meant our class was too small. Deloris was emotional; she now has to teach Buch 1 (z.B. “Der Mann ist gr??.” …Not so fun). And Pascal dropped out in fear of the Mittelstufe and will return next year.

So me, Paul, and new guy Zdenek from Czech Republic (Tschechien) entered the Mittelstufe on Wednesday, which has been running for the past 1.5 months and they are almost complete with Chapter 3 of 7. Our teacher, Ina, speaks and writes so much faster and uses different phrases for things I thought I already learned. I can’t finish a complete thought without being corrected, but then I am not thinking slow enough for me to understand all the mistakes I am carelessly making. I feel I still have a long way to go…

The weather was good the beginning of the week. I studied directly after class in the sun along the Isar River to absorb some Vitamin D (eh?). The cold and absence of sun can be pretty depressive…sitting outside also cheaper than visiting the many tanning booths offered at just about every corner. But this artifical option will probably be more appealing later in the season. The average temperatures lately have been around 50-55 F during the day and just above freezing (37 F) during the night. Studying outside has helped me get used to the colder temperatures.

It’s official, Alex’s project in Regensburg will end late January. That means we will be moving into a larger apartment in Munich;D. Very exciting. We are looking forward to cooking/baking a lot more together and having people over for gettogethers. Tonight we will visit a Stammtisch, where people get together for a drink and converse. First its German…then English. Hopefully, the people are fun.
Anyway. Have a good weekend everyone…

Slowly I am trying to piece together verbs with separable and inseparable prefixes and prepositions. It was easy with english: content, extend, pretend, intend… Now it’s back to scratching my nails on the chalkboard with 3x as many prefixes.
But I saw some results this morning with the exercises. Doloris didn’t bite today, yeah! She’s a pretty hardcore teacher…very traditional in some sense and has a hard time deviating but she is really does try to improve our memorization of the words. She hijacks the copier to give us more exercises that are lacking in our super expensive workbooks.
Inlingua is a business run by a less than efficient administration. One girl in my class was very upset because she paid for 20 hours of class per week but she will lose 4 hours due to the holiday on 3 October to celebrate the reunification of East and West Germany. They won’t let her make up the time.
I am learning that there is virtually no such think as customer satisfaction or service in Munich. This is evident in the post office, grocery stores, and restaurants. Maybe, it’s the local Bavarians that are just ticked that so many foreigners have resided in their city or they just don’t know otherwise to be something other than grumpy and unhelpful. So this is just one of the facts of life you have to face here and find another way to getting what you want. There is usually one person that knows what’s going on and will be very helpful. Apparently this is typical of all the language schools in Germany, but from what I’ve heard from other students who have tried the other language schools, Inlingua is one of, if not the best, language school.

A Thunderstorm

rolled in and so the temperature has not moved above 14 C (57 F), the normal morning temperature during the summer. I managed to dodge the rain both to and from class, yeah, since I forgot my rain jacket. I shouldn’t have left my nifty WWF umbrella in Florida.

Today, we had to switch classrooms and merge with another class because the class became too small for inlingua to make any money off us poor speakers of German. Problem is I had 5 more lessons left in Buch 2 and the other class is already on Lesson 8 of Buch 3. My class hasn’t practice alot of grammar that is presented in Lesson 8, Buch 3. Yikees! Luckily, my teacher sympathizes to those shafted by the quantum leap and will make the smarter ‘kids’ suffer with stuff “they have already learned, but obviously have not mastered.”

Also… Endlich, treffe mich ich mit einem anderen Auslander aus den U.S.A.! Er heisst Tim und er kommt aus Kalifornia. Naturlich, er ist verheiratet mit einer deutschen Frau, die besser deutsche und englisch als ihn spricht Leider. Nachtdem er komme ich aus den U.S.A. gelernt hatte, sprach er sogleich mit mir auf englisch. Er wohnt in München seit 5 Monate und ich spreche besser deutsch als ihn mit nur 2 Monate. Wie schade!

Not sure if that was right up there but, I’ve gotta practice. I am coming to the stark realization that I will not pass this up-coming language examination. Here’s why:

According to German.About.com:

With two months of intense learning, I can reasonably estimate that I have a vocabulary of about 500 words and understand about 2,000. I have looked at the practice tests for the Deutschen Sprachprüfung (german language test) and it compares to the reading comprehension sections within the SATs. Even my language teacher told me I am not ready to pass the exam. I am feeling a bit discouraged. But…this exam is good practice for when I am ready and Alex has given me pointers to calm my spirits and help me convince the Universities that I serious about the language.

But my slowness puts things in perspective. I have to continue the intensive language classes for another 3 months after my tourist visa expires. My visa automatically? transfers to a language student visa. From there, once I pass the language exam I can take the final exams for my major.
Keine Panne! Just a lot of red tape and hoops to jump. B)