Sprachenshule

I made it to Saturday! Unfortunately, the weekend will be busy too because I have a lot to catch up on from ignorning my life all week. But first, I’d like to talk about sprachenschule.


I selected my school based on internet reviews. I have never been a huge fan of this method for restaurants but what else am I going to go on? I had issues with this place from the beginning but when I went back to the drawing board I felt as if I was just as likely to encounter the same or worse issues elsewhere.


My first priority in my German lessons was to skip level 1. I don't have time to spend a week learning “Guten tag, wie gehts?”. I have picked up some words from my coworkers and iPhone apps but no grammar, which is what makes German so special. Last weekend, I devoted myself to learning about it. The internet taught me about maskulin, feminin or neutrum as well as nominativ, akkusativ, dativ, and genetiv. I took the placement exam for my class on Sunday night and it was scary... it was like I knew nothing! The exam was a set of paragraphs where you had to fill in the blanks. But some of the paragraphs were all blanks! I dont know if you want a noun or a verb or much less what to do with it. So I thought I bombed it. oh well.


Monday, I was obviously sooo excited for my first day of schule! Here is a video of me at the u-bahn stop waiting for the train


So first thing when I get to the school, the dude in the office tells me that my private lesson is at a different time than I signed up for. Why? Because that’s just what they do on the first day. Was there a way I would have known before showing up here? No. uggghhh. It’s 8 and my group lesson starts at 10. But I can’t go home because there is an  orientation at 9. I wandered around and returned at 9 for a 10 minute meeting about what U-Bahn stop is closest to school. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? What a horrible waste of my morning. And obviously we know what stop to get off at because we are all here. uggghhh again. I went for a walk before my lesson started so I wouldn’t throw a table at someone. I encountered few other conflicts with the administration throughout the week and explicitly told them that how they were operating was unprofessional. I got the standard “meh” that I have now received a couple of times in Deutschland. At the end of the week I wrote a detailed QYPE review and they immediately responded with much more than a meh. Too bad.


Thankfully, the actual lessons all turned out to be great and they did place me in the second level. For the first few days my small group teacher was Deiter. He allowed no English (or Italian, which was more prevalent in our class). If you said one word he would cover his ears and act like you were dragging your nails across a chalk board. I loved it. For the second half of the week our small group teacher was Caroline. She didn’t mind that I sidetracked the class with my jokes in German that only she and one other kid could understand. I was totally the smartest kid in the class! My peers are all in Germany just to learn German. They go to class in the morning and hang out in the city for the rest of the day. That would be fun but if that was me, I would spend some of my 20 free hours in the day to do my homework (at least?) or maybe study so the next day I’m not confused over the same thing. These folks are here for 2-6 months just to learn the language but at this pace I don’t have too much hope for the two monthers. My private teacher was Zara or maybe Sara, I’m not sure. She was really sweet and patient but resorted to English quickly. I learned a ton from her and she even gave me some extra work with the answer keys to take home on Friday! She really made me focus on pronunciation which made me realize just how bad mine is. I took a final test at the end of the week and ACED it. This one’s going on the fridge.


After school every day I would go to work with so much enthusiasm and excitement to speak with my coworkers and also plans to study hard in the evening. But once I got to work I was reminded that my 9:00 was actually 14:00 and I didn’t have time for the fun stuff :(


The week was long and my brain still hurts but it was definitely worth it. I plan to take one more session of German class but this time at a different school and in the evenings.