Today was the first day of the second half of the Sommerschule. It’s so strange to think that we’re halfway done, but I’m also amazed at the progress I’ve made since I came here. The first day I could barely introduce myself–I could say who I was and where I came from and that was about it. I struggled to say much of anything for a while, so that at my first complete, coherent sentence Jeff gave me a high five. Now, I can follow conversations and participate, and although much of my German is still rather simple, I know I’ve gotten much better and my vocabulary is much improved. Last week, I managed to tell the entire story of the Green Day concert I went to last year in German. That required past tense, too, which I’m not very good at, mostly because I only learned it a little in April or May! The improvement is now not as rapid as it was at first, but I’m picking up important words and phrases here and there. I’m certainly talking much faster than before, which means I know how to say what I want to and can learn other things to add to that.
Today in Sprachkurs we learned our prepositions, which is what I’ve been struggling with the most. We never made it to the Dativ forms in German II so I’d been using them a little since I got here, without knowing why I was saying things the way I was. That’s just the way immersion works. I’m not sure why things are, it’s just how they’re said. I’ve picked up some adjective endings that way. Anyway, it’s really nice to officially know why the prepositions work like that. My Sprachkurs teacher is a TA, Randall, and he’s really good! I know I’m learning a lot in his class and in the everyday conversations.
Sorry to not have any updates on activities outside school; haven’t been doing much, really. Tomorrow is the opera, though! Oh, and my roommate, Sophia, made a zombie film for her class that stars pretty much the entire school so I’m trying to figure out how to post that. Unfortunately I seem to have used all my storage space and the YouTube upload is threatening to take hours. I’ll get that up as soon as possible, though.