I've been meaning to write a blog about going to Metz, France last weekend, but my stupid computer is NOT having any more of me uploading photos. I have to do it in 20 photo intervals or the system shuts down. Fuck you, HP laptop. This is what I get for going the "cheap" route on a laptop. My thinking when I bought it was that I would only be using it for a year, but next time I just splurge and by the Mac. I have a feeling I'm throwing this son-of-a-bitch out the window before I leave Germany anyway.
Well, I officially started the "full" day of classes this week, and by classes I mean non-stop German. SO. MUCH. GERMAN. By the time I leave class, I feel like my brain is going to explode. I have four different sections of German taught by five different teachers (professors? Lecturers?): Hoerverstehen, Leseverstehen, Kommunikation and Grammatik. Yesterday I had Kommunikation and Leseverstehen and today I had Hoerverstehen, Leseverstehen and Grammatik. Sweet Jesus. We do a lot of reading, I take a lot of notes, and we do a lot of speaking. Thank God, though, because I'm having one hell of a time speaking German. They make different sounds for everything. For instance, "z" is not pronounced like we do in English. It has a sort of "ts" sound. So I sound like a dumb ass when I try to say it. And the "r"s are funky, too. Like they ALMOST roll their r's, but not quite. It's like a half roll from the back of the throat. Really? Let's make this shit just a TAD more complicated. Oh, and then the difference between the "ch" and "sch" sounds? That's what is making my head hurt. I know that one day it is just going to click, but for now, at the end of my 5 hour day of nothing but German, all I want to do is come home and drink (OMG, which reminds me--whilst at the Netto, which is sort of like our Winco but WAY smaller, we found a HUGE bottle of Jaager for, like, 22 euro. 22 euro! I dislike Jaager, but I thought about buying it just out of principle).
I also need to talk about the people in my class. It is high time I vent about this. Most of the people in my class are really nice and speak English (at least broken English). Since we all pretty much speak little to no German, we speak English when we can't figure out what the other is saying. But there is this one guy in our class, I'm not sure where he is from (Bangladesh? Pakistan? Iraq? Fuck, I don't know and I don't care) and I can already tell he is going to be a giant pain in my ass. It's nice to know that ass-kissers transcend across borders. I'm pretty convinced this guy does nothing but go home and study vocabulary words in German so he can come to class and talk non-stop. I could tell our Frau for the Leseverstehen was getting fed up with him, too. If I knew how to ask her if she wanted me to jump him after class in German, I would have proposed it.
I ate lunch today with two very nice girls from Bulgaria who are now living here. They have names I cannot even begin to pronounce or spell (I think one is Desislava and the other is Kremena?) but it's nice to finally get to know some new people in my classes. That doesn't mean that I'm going to spare them anything when it comes to taking this test in six months. I'm gonna bust some serious shit out. Due to my type-A personality, I am now reviewing notes by re-writing them and organizing them by color in the notebook I bought. It will be nice to bring it back to the states with me, too, in case I have friends who want to learn German from my copious amounts of notes I'm taking. And I'm buying a television tomorrow because the computer techy on the floor below me told me that there is a satelite hooked up to our building already, so I basically will have free cable. You know what that means? "Law & Order: SVU" and "The Closer" from, like, two seasons ago (because Germany is an entire season behind on all shows from the states) dubbed in German. Let the shitty Germany television excursion begin!
Yesterday, Brice and our new friend Nathan, who is on exchange from Missouri, and I went downtown and then wandered through Old Saarbruecken, which is actually quite lovely. I didn't know there were nice parts of this city (well, at least parts not covered with graffiti, or dog schiesse every 10 feet). We walked around for the better part of the afternoon and into the evening, and then capped it off with a visit to an erotic store. That German erotic store kind of scared me. There were things in there I didn't even know existed. And almost an entire section of incest porn. Really? THAT is FUCKING gross. I mean, to each his own, but I judge. I judge a lot. Is incest even legal here??? Sick.
Tonight, Brice and Nathan came over to my apartment and we made some sort of German noodle soup thingy with bread and some desserts I picked up at one of the 4000 baeckereis in this city (specifically at my new favorite one, which is near the train station, because I've gone in a few times now and the same woman is always working and she is very, very nice to me). And I bought a beer (and a coke) from the vending machine in my building. Ah, wonderful. I feel like less of an alcoholic if I'm buying my beverages from a vending machine in the basement of my apartment complex. I also bought my first household item, a thing of what I'm assuming is the equivalent of Draino. If it weren't for photos on the front of everything, I would be so screwed. But I finally got fed up with my shower filling up with water, oh, and my sink. Gross. There's nothing quite like standing in your own dirty water in your own shower. But now that it's fixed, I have a feeling my seven minutes of warm water are going to be THAT much more enjoyable.
Katrin also shared some more German music with me, and these are actual German bands singing in German (although I still really like Die Happy, even though it's in English and the lyrics make, well, sometimes no sense at all). So I'm listening to one of the bands now, Wir Sind Helden, and it's got a nice beat. I don't know what they're singing about, though. Flying monkeys? Beer? Everything in German is about beer. Or sex.
Okay, I think that is all for today. If I can get these stupid pictures uploaded, I will tell you all about the trip to Metz, France. It was killer.
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