The weather here is unbelievable! One minute it’s beautiful and the next minute it’s pouring down rain–which is also beautiful, given you won’t have to hike in it for an hour or more. Yesterday we tried to hike to Kachina Peak, which is somewhat of a tradition here and is supposed to be absolutely beautiful. I asked Jeff (the director of the Sommerschule) if we could hike to Kachina, and he scheduled it for yesterday because that would be our last opportunity to go. It’s a shorter hike if you take the ski lift halfway, but it wasn’t open on Wednesday (oops!). So, we just tried to hike the whole way. I was the slowest person in the group because I kept taking pictures of everything. It must have felt like I was crawling up the mountain to everyone else. We got caught in the rain on the way up, not too far from the top, I think (maybe another hour?). It felt like we were climbing into the thunderstorm, instead of it coming towards us. I came prepared for rain, with a jacket and a backpack so I could put my camera away and keep it dry. I think it would have been fine if we hadn’t seen lighting, so Curtis (our guide for the day) made us turn back. I was not happy at all, but it was probably safer that way. I did practically slide all the way down the mountain though, because the path is rocky and there was water flowing down it like a river in places. I also found out that nothing I own is truly water-proof–I was soaked, and so was most of the stuff in my backpack, though my camera is OK.
Today has been wonderful, and I’m very much looking forward to some of my homework. We get to read “Das Urteil” (Kafka’s “The Judgment”) for my literature class! Kafka is the reason I was interested in learning German at first, the very first thing that gave me the idea to take a German class. I wanted to read the original German text. Of course it’s evolved to more than that, but this is very exciting because this is where it all started! The very first Kafka story I ever read….and now I can read it in German! Strange how everything ends up being a circle like that. My German isn’t good enough to understand all of it, so it’s good I’m reading it for a class where it’ll be explained. And it will be easier than Schiller’s Don Carlos, which we just read a part of. Class tomorrow is going to be so much fun!
This immersion is stranger every day. By now I’m so used to speaking only German, so that when someone speaks to me in English, I’m inclined to not say anything at all. It’s forbidden here, but if someone outside the school speaks to me in English, I can respond. It just doesn’t feel right though! Half the time I say small things in German anyway. The other strange thing is, when I think about next semester and imagine someone asking me what I’ve been doing this summer, I imagine constructing an answer in German, as if this is how it’s always going to be. Then I remember that I’ll be speaking English to everyone, and that conversation will be a bit easier, but I have to remind myself of that. Everyone here, including myself, keeps forgetting little English words too–we always ask “Was ist das auf Englisch?” I think it’ll be an interesting transition coming home after this!
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