Things are still great here!
I basically just have a little bit to say about many different things; here I go.
One thing I forgot to mention in the last post about school was the amazing fact that I end school on April 23rd!!! The 12th grade has their university exams at that time, and the grades they get essentially determine where and what they can study. It's a big deal, and it makes taking the SAT not so bad. I'm not sure how many days the exams stretch over, though.
I am noticing that I am learning and understanding more and more German everyday. Although, at school, I am understanding different teachers at different rates based on their speech style and speed.
On Friday, I had my first German lessen with a teacher at school. She teaches Latin and Russian, but she is Ukrainian so German isn't her first language either. To asses my current knowledge, she asked me tons of questions about me, where I'm from, why I'm in Germany, my family, etc. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I was able to say. Even if my pronunciation makes ears want to bleed and my sentence structure is out of whack, at least I can get my point across and that's something!
That night I went the birthday party of a friend from school, where I also impressed myself with how much German I spoke. Everyone is so understanding, encouraging, and patient with my learning. I mean, I strive for the level of patience these people have.
The fun game with learning languages is that I have had to learn how to take whatever I want to express and find different ways of saying it because of limited vocabulary. For example, if I don't know 1 crucial word then I may need to use 10 words I do know to describe it. That's good though because then I have reenforced 10 words and learned a new one!
One thing I have found interesting is that I have been asked a lot of these types of questions: "What is it like listening to German?" or "Do you like the sound of German?" They must be very aware of the fact that some people think German sounds harsh to listen to. Here is what I have noticed, though. As I am understanding more, German sounds more like words with actual meaning rather than random sounds being propeled towards my ears. Another thing, German really doesn't sound as angry as people think it sounds, it just doesn't necessarily have a nice flow to it.
I had my first volleyball practice on Wednesday. Let's just say that within 10 minutes, I remembered why I only played for 1 year in middle school. I'm not really a huge fan of the sport, but I'm going to stick with it.
I pretty much have no complaints.
Actually that's a lie.. The weather is difficult to deal with, but shockingly not because it's too cold for me. It's because the weather temperature changes drastically 10 times throughout the day. In California, it's either hot or "cold" (because we all know in Sacramento it doesn't really get cold). I also think it's unfair to have thunderstorms in September, but maybe that's just me.
On Saturday, my host family and I were planning on going on this bike ride through villages. However, the weather was bad so we ended up driving through them and then going out to lunch.
I only have a couple photos from the excursion (sorry guys, I'm not a big photographer). The first two are of villages, (nothing I could do about the cars in the way). Nothing too special about them except that it's not really what America looks like. The cool thing was that to get from one to the other you had to cross the river. The only way to do that was by ferry, which can take cars, too! For the third, my host sister just called out my name, I looked up, then she shouted "Smile!" I really like the photo, and as it shows, I'm a happy American living in Germany.
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