My Class is Nearly Finished!

I'm writing this post at a time when I'm down in the dumps. Here's why.

Before coming here, all I could focus on was what was up and coming. I was super excited about all of the adventures I was going to have, all the great experiences and memories I'm going to make. But now that I'm here, it's like I'm randomly just started living someone else's life and stopped living my own. I've left behind an entire year back home with my wonderful friends at IU. I see them posting pictures and other things that I would normally be experiencing right now. But I'm not.

Now, I know I'm incredibly lucky to be able to be studying abroad here and gaining these wonderful things, but that doesn't make the fact I'm missing out on my life back home any easier. As I'm wrapping up my first month here, it's crazy how quickly time actually has gone by. You think you've prepared  yourself emotionally, but there really isn't away to fully be ready for it. I know that in 10 months I'll look back and miss my life here, but now it seems like such a far away dream that I'll be back home. I really  must sound like a spoiled child right now. I apologize.

Anyway, on to more positive things. I'm basically done with my intensive German class! Tomorrow is the last day, and we literally are only watching a movie. It's barely a school day in my eyes. As exciting as it is, I look back on what I've gotten out of this class, which is actually a lot more than I realized while actually taking the course. First, I definitely gained more confident speaking German. I mean, that does not mean at all that my German is anywhere near where I want it to be, it just means I'm less afraid of being judged for incorrectly saying something or having a thick American accent. For those fellow foreign language learners, losing the fear of judgement is actually kind of a big deal.

Secondly, I've gained more confidence on grammar concepts that before coming here, were completely an obstacle to be overcome. For example, Konjunktiv II. It's something that exists in English, but it is way more developed and intricate in German. I've been working on trying to integrate it into my speaking skills (with moderate success) but it still remains a topic that I've mastered only on paper (well, mostly mastered).

Thirdly (and this one is the corny one), I've met many people that I wish I could get to know better, but sadly many of them are leaving at the end of the week. They were only here for this particular course. Perhaps our paths will cross again in the future, and I wish you the best of luck in your futures.

Lastly, I've gotten 3 credit hours for a 400 level German class completed in 3 and a half weeks. Like, that probably sounds stupid, but that's the quickest and possibly most effective 3 credit hours I've ever completed. Hurray for me!

Outside of class, there isn't a whole lot to report. I'm in the process of setting up an audition with the Freiburg Student Orchestra next month. They're playing Beethoven 7 at their next concert which REALLY excites me. (I wrote this post while listening to this symphony :D) It's one of my favorite Beethoven symphonies. So hopefully that goes well. Also, this past weekend I spent quite a bit of time with the Pfaffenweiler community band (which I've talked about in my previous post) and that was interesting. I played at the reopening of a hall which had recently received renovations. I was again publicly welcomed to the community and to the band. Then Sunday, the band traveled about an hour and a half to this village of re-built farmhouses from the 1600s. It would have been really a pleasant experience, except the whole day was basically the sky peeing on us and me trying to stay dry, and then also marching awkwardly with my oboe. (Luckily it was NOT raining during this time). Overall, it was definitely a good, relaxing weekend that allowed me to recuperate. It is still exhausting living a majority of the day in German. I hope soon it's not. But it's unlikely.

Things I am looking forward to in the upcoming future?

• No classes. No early mornings. Sleeping in.
• The other IU students and I are planning a trip to Europa Park (well, I think we are going to)
• Time to just sit and read while drinking coffee. I'm enjoying Eragon in German right now. :D
• Hiking through the Black Forest. I hope to accomplish this soon, before it gets too cold.

Random Thoughts

This is probably going to be a short post. I just have had a few thoughts that I felt were worth sharing.

Monday was my first rehearsal with the little community band here in Pfaffenweiler.  I had no idea what to expect, but what it was was not it. I'm used to a punctual rehearsal, where basically everyone is ready to go right at the official rehearsal time. Here, that was most definitely not the case. It was nice that it was so relaxed and such, but there comes a point when it is too relaxed. It bothered me. And then comes the moment when we finally played our first note together. There was no tuning note, there was nothing. Just the conductor (who happens to be British, actually!) asked for us all to play an F. And we did. Except I'm pretty sure many of them were playing an F# or an E instead of a unified F. It was literally impossible to even try and match anything. So I basically just played my nearly in tune F (I always do pre-rehearsal tuning. Normally the tuning note at the start of a rehearsal is simply a confirmation and getting adjusted to the ensemble pitch level.)

This whole F exercise thing lasted for like 20 minutes. And it improved slightly, but still not enough for me to even here a single note. But then I'm handed the music of the first piece we are rehearsing, and it's a band arrangement of Jupiter from Holst's "The Planets". Now, even though the ensemble sounded terrible playing it, it was the perfect piece to begin with. It took me right back home to my high school, when Jupiter is always played at graduation. :D

So the rest of the rehearsal continues, and I'm just doing what I'm told to. The conductor would make ensemble suggestions and would work on stuff, and literally everything I agreed with and knew, which was comforting to me, knowing that my instruction to this point has been universal. My only annoyance was the ensemble's ability to play quietly. When the music said piano, they all played mezzo-forte, to forte. They don't pick up quickly which bothered me.

But, despite the obvious not so goodness of the ensemble, it was comforting to be back in a familiar setting, doing something that I know how to do well, in contrast to basically everything else going on in Freiburg, where I feel I know nothing. The good thing about that, is my host mom has been so nice and has been helping me try and find an orchestra of slightly higher caliber in Freiburg that I can play in. I'm not sure I understand anything exactly right, but I think a neighbor of ours is going to try and get me in to play Beethoven's 7th next month, and I literally almost cried tears of joy, cause that's totally my favorite Beethoven symphony. Gah. I'm dying just thinking about the possibility.

Okay, well it's late and I'm tired, so bye! Thanks for reading and stay posted!

So the adventure continues...

It's been over a week.  In that week I've felt all sorts of emotions. Some good, others bad. German culture isn't freakishly different to American, so there hasn't been a whole lot of culture shock (as I had anticipated) but time here seems to be moving slower.  Like every day feels really long, and the weeks therefore even longer. As I talked earlier, it's also been very exhausting. But on to my week...

So I ended up only taking the short story seminar, but it was a mistake. The literature is just flat out too hard for me right now and it isn't engaging at all, sitting there. I would have moved to a different seminar, but I have to attend all 10 class periods to get my point, which I need for the credit transfer back to IU and I missed the first day of all the other seminars, obviously. So I'm stuck there for another week. At least it isn't an entire semester. That would have been a problem.

Speaking of the semester, I also have a rough schedule worked out for when normal college begins. If all goes as planned, I will only have classes Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. This is so exciting actually. It will be the first time in my whole life I didn't have school Monday through Friday. You have no idea how happy this makes me feel. I mean, German university classes typically only meet once a week, so that made that pretty easy, actually.  The classes I'm interested in taking are a literature course taught at Uni Freiburg. I anticipate this to be the roughest, because this class is obviously for natives, and I am assuming it involves just lots of reading and I'm slow at reading German.  But it'll really be good for my vocabulary I believe. (I don't think it'll be like this short story class, where it's freakishly hard texts. It's all works by the same author I believe)  I am also then taking a German politics class, which I think would help me just to understand their whole government system better. Theirs is way more complex, it seems, then ours.  I'm also going to be taking a couple more classes at SLI. A pronunciation class and something else, that I forget at the  moment. Oops. There is also another class I'm going to take, but it has yet to actually be decided. I'm not sure.

This isn't much of an accomplishment, but I convinced two other Americans that I was German. I fessed up eventually. As in, when I started speaking English and didn't have an accent. But it was fun. When I would say something and they didn't understand, I would ask another IU student to act as a translator. :D I had way too much fun doing that. One said I didn't have German accent from around Freiburg and he thought I was from up north. Haha. Americans.

Another highlight of my week! I met up with a German who went to Jasper for a semester and we had coffee! We just sat and spoke German and it was fabulous.  Also, tomorrow I'm meeting up with a couple of friends who were a part of the JHS exchange, from when I came here in summer 2011. Again, we're getting coffee. (As a coffee addict, Germany doesn't help ease me off of my addiction. No shame. No regrets.)

Well, that's all for now! I don't suspect anything new will be happening this coming week. I'm forward to next weekend, though. It means I'll done with that stupid short story class. That'll be a relief.

Till next time!
Taylor

Week One: Check!

I've been here already over a week. It has been one loooong week for me. We began classes, I've met the mayor of Pfaffenweiler, I've been to the local street fest, and most importantly, I've already felt an improvement in my German.  While this week has been packed full with many exciting and fun things, it has also been one of the most exhausting weeks of my life. Let me put this into perspective: in America, I am able to function, communicate, and do nearly everything with not really putting for much thought or effort, because I grew up in an English speaking world and it just is normal and instinctive to me. But here, every small detail I have to think about and exert a tremendous effort.  Just trying to understand the workers at the bakery how much I owe can actually be slightly strenuous. (I mean, not really. But more effort than it would take in America.) Also, in my classes at the Sprachlehrinstitut (the language school at the Uni-Freiburg) there are international students from all over the world. Imagine this: it's hard a lot of times for us to understand non-native English speakers when they speak English because of their thick accent and such. Try attempting to understand thick foreign accents of a foreign language but in that foreign language. I mean, for example, an Asian accent in German.  That takes way more effort than understanding Germans speaking sometimes.

Anyway, enough rambling of how strenuous it is, my week has been seriously amazing.  Tuesday was basically a repeat of Monday, except we all also finally figured out a German cell phone. For me personally, I just wanted to do the cheapest option as possible. I literally just bought an inexpensive phone and a SIM card and activated it, coming only to 30 Euros total, with 10 Euros on my Pay-As-You-Go phone.  Remember the really bad phones from around 10 or so years ago? That's this one. But it was cheap and basically only for emergencies. On Tuesday, we also registered for our classes at the Sprachlehrinstitut (SLI), which was exciting.  Before arriving, we all took an online placement-exam.  I got a 53% on that exam and was actually depressed at how low I scored.  But that little dinky score actually placed me in German 10 of 13! I was rather pleased with myself.

On Wednesday, we had our first class.  It began with basically an hour and a half of introductions, talking to each other, getting to learn who is who and so forth.  It was a total of 3 hours, with a half hour break in the middle.  Afterwards, I seriously felt pleased with myself, because it was the first time I felt I effectively communicated for an extended amount of time in German and had no struggle and just spoke fluidly.  After reflecting on it though, the class was actually too easy for me.  The teacher speaks freakishly slow, and even to me her slow speed sounds comical.  It eventually led to me and the other IU students in my class asking what we should do or what she recommended. (She hinted several times that us that we were basically amongst the top, no bragging intended. :D)  And on Friday, she said we should be able to move up to the next level on Monday, which is both exciting and a bit intimidating.

Outside of class, I've been spending time with the other IU students, just getting to know each other and the city better.  There is a LOT of English being spoken with them, and I basically said on Monday, there will be no English from me anymore. I came here to speak German, not English. I hope the others follow suit.

Outside of all of that, last night was the grand opening to the Schneckenfest.  It was similar to the Strassenfest, for those back home in Jasper, but yet not. Imagine just a more fun, better environment, version of the Strassenfest. I mean, for Pete's sake, you can just walk around holding a glass of wine or a beer and it is totally acceptable and normal. Plus the food is better.

Really quick, here are just a few things I'm looking forward to in the next week.

1. Seminars in the afternoon (more classes. I'm planning on attending a short story seminar and a German morphology)
2. Planning my classes for the rest of the semester at Uni-Freiburg
3. No English

Thanks for reading! I hope it wasn't too boring and please share and keep coming back!

First Days

Warning, this post is a bit long. Please enjoy it all!

So, I've been here for four days already, and it's been amazing.up to this point. After arriving late Thursday night and a good night's rest, I woke up on Friday for my first real day.  It's only been a few days but it feels like it has been months and already a bit foggy as to what exactly we did.  But I know after a nice breakfast with my host family, Shannon and I went for a brief tour of Pfaffenweiler, Jasper's sister city and my home for the next year.  At the end of the tour, we stopped by someone's home to pick up a card for me to use as a bus pass to visit Freiburg the next day, because I hadn't received my own (I received it finally on Sunday).  The language up to this point was definitely a struggle.  Between the local dialect throwing me off, people speaking really quickly, and me just not being super good or comfortable at German, I just couldn't really function yet in German.

After finishing the tour, Shannon and I decided to begin putting a puzzle together.  We swap a bit between English and German in this conversation, and I gained a tiny bit of confidence in the language.  After awhile, Shannon's sister, Laura, arrived and she was really nice.  They were making plans for the night to go to a wine fest in a nearby village, Breisach. Of course they invited me and I decided to go.

We then got ready and headed to the fest, where at first just Shannon and I walked around and drank a couple of glasses of wine, which definitely was delicious.  We eventually met up with Laura (this time with several of her friends) for awhile.  This is when I began to realize, that when someone spoke directly to me, I could usually understand what they were saying.  When there was a group of people and the conversation flew by quickly, I simiply could not yet comprehend it.  After being at the wine fest for awhile, Shannon and I left and went home, speaking a mix of German and English again (but more German than before!)

The next day, Sunday, was the day Shannon and I went to Freiburg.  She took me on a good city tour, showing me where I can buy normal, necessary things for living and such.  For lunch, I had my first currywurst ever! It was so good! Also, something that is very common for Germans to do is eat their french fries with mayonnaise, instead of ketchup (though ketchup is still normal for them).  And let me say, from an American's point of few, french fries with mayo is totally delicious. I recommend it.

After lunch, Shannon and I headed over to a local brewery beer garden for an AMAZING beer.  It is called Inselhof Radler, and has a very present and tasty lemonade type flavor. Oh my, it's the best beer I've had in my life to date. I definitely recommend this as well.  After finishing a tasty beer, Shannon and I heed back to Pfaffenweiler for awhile.  I decided to watch a movie in German, and I chose The Devil Wears Prada, because it's one of my favorite movies of all time.  Halfway through the movie, my host mom decided to join and finished it with me.

Shortly after the movie, Shannon and I returned back to Freiburg (this time with her friend) where we had dinner.  We just hung out for awhile in Freiburg, drinking a little, then returned home. Originally the plan was to watch a movie, but I was tired and just returned to my bedroom.  It is really exhausting trying to constantly understand a foreign language, and communicate in it.

The next day was a super easy day, with not much to do other than go and show my face at the IES office and receive some information, then go to a welcome dinner for the IES students from the IU Customized Program.  It didn't last long and was nice to finally meet all of the other IU students.  The real fun began the next day (today).

So then today, the first real day of our program.  It began with an orientation session, which lasted about one and a half hours.  We mainly just talked about a few preliminary things and such.  We than began the city tour, where they showed us the important places that are necessary for life in Germany. I had seen most of the places a couple of days prior, but it was nice to see it again.

At the end of the tour, the six of us decided to stay together and have lunch.  It was nice because it was our first real time alone to just get to know each other.  During lunch, we spoke pretty much strictly German and it was super fun, relaxing, and low-stress.  I've discovered it is definitely easier to speak German with other Americans than with native German speakers. Weird.  After finishing dinner, none of us really wanted to venture off alone or go home, so we just went to Vauban, where most of the IU students are living.  We played some volleyball, switching between English and German when talking. After awhile, we stopped and just started talking, asking each other about our travels, thoughts so far, etc.  From here on out, it was all pretty much in English.  I think it was mutually agreed today was to form some bonds and get acquainted with one another, then tomorrow we will be back in all German.  This whole just hanging out and talking thing lasted several hours, when we finally returned back to busier parts of Freiburg to do some preliminary shopping, getting notebooks, folders, etc.  We enjoyed a nice dinner, where I personally had a nice cheese pizza, but different than what you think of in America.  It is really flat and just bread and cheese basically.  Tasted really good and really cheesy, just as I like it.

So yeah, that is my experience to this point, being probably more detailed and boring than necessary, but everything is currently new and I want to talk about it all! Please stay tuned!