Yesterday, we had the first tanzparty of the summerschule! Our “tanzparty” (dance party) happens before our free days, lasts until 1 in the morning, and the students play DJ and dance. It was really fun, but I think everyone was a bit shy the first time. Things started out on a good note with Fleetwood Mac, which is really fun to dance to. Then there was some K-pop (Korean pop) and German rap, which I’m not sure how anyone is supposed to dance to. I was really surprised to find that I could hold a conversation in German the entire time (as I wasn’t dancing for most of it.) I even learned some new words—quite impressive for midnight! My favorite part was at the very end, when we played jazz and I helped teach some of my friends how to swing dance. We have plans to take over the next tanzparty with good music we can swing dance to. If anybody has good ideas for this, they’re very welcome!
After dancing until 1 in the morning, I woke up and went hiking in the mountains by our resort with some other sommerschule students. I was tired to begin with, but the real trouble was breathing up there—no matter what, I just couldn’t get enough air. After I got used to it, though, it wasn’t so bad. And the mountains are unbelievably beautiful! We hiked to Williams Lake and stopped halfway for lunch. It was wonderful—sack lunches, no cell phone reception, speaking German and listening to all the birds and the water in the little river nearby. Williams Lake is at about 11,000 feet and several miles from the Snakedance, so quite the hike! We were all so tired afterwards, but fortunately only a little sunburned.
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As for the German, it’s getting better still. Other people have started arriving in the area, and one stopped me today and asked, “Do you work here?” and I replied, “Nein.” It was really weird; small words like that just become habit. I laughed and told her I didn’t speak English…in English. That was a little awkward. She understood in the end, but it was very funny. We also met someone while hiking today who minored in German and thought we were all native Germans when she talked to us—admittedly I didn’t say much, but it was hilarious to see how nervous she was to speak to us in German!
Also: new pictures of the hike are posted in “Die Deutsche Sommerschule.”