I took German for several years in high school. I took two quarters of German in college. And I studied abroad in Austria for 3 months. I should be better than I am and I'm just not. Granted, it had been about 5 years of not speaking a word of German before moving here, but come on, you'd think I would have retained more than I had.
In the last post, you saw where we have been living. Here is where we've been studying. I would say that as of now, the husband's German is better than mine. If you know anything about our relationship, or if you have ever played board games with us, you must know that this is a subject of contention. Why are we so gosh darn competitive with each other?
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Our language school IFS (the Institut fur Sprachvermittlung) in a neighborhood called Charlottenburg in Berlin |
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| Me and my classmates (the woman in black just right of the center is my teacher, Maria) |
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| Take 2 of us enjoying our party for Maria's last day |
The best part about my language class is that I am the only native English speaker. Everyone else is from either Poland, the Czech Republic, Yemen, Guatemala, Korea, Spain, Italy, or Russia. It is quite entertaining speaking German with all of these different accents floating around. It is also nice because there is no common language among everyone, which means our teacher only speaks German to us. It takes a little bit of getting used to when your question about German gets answered in German, but ultimately I prefer it that way. I feel cheated now every time I think about my previous language instructors speaking English to me. It may help to clarify a question quickly, but it snaps me out of German mode and back into English mode. These classes keep me focused on German 100% of the time. Stay tuned for more language updates. They are sure to come. At least some guaranteed to be embarrassing.
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