Diving

The Wintersemester here in Germany started up this past Monday. Finally. While, everyone back home is having midterms.. I just had my first day of class. I only had one class however. History of East and West Germany. Let's just say it didn't go so well.

I got to the University and found the room just fine. I got there about 10 minutes to 11, which was perfect since the class began at 11. I took a seat, calmed my nerves (which were going crazy) and took out my pen and paper. I was completely ready to cram my head full of knowledge. At about 11:15 the class hadn't started yet, and every single seat in the auditorium like room was taken. This would have been okay, except that people were still coming. When the class started about five minutes later, peopel were crawling over eachother carefully in order to find a place on the steps or in the back to sit or stand. I made amental note to always get to class early.

Class begins. The teacher is a middle-aged man named Hudemann. He seems nice enough, and even cracks a few jokes. I only get them because everyone else laughs. Otherwise I wouldn't have known there were jokes. He brings up an outline for the day, and I start to copy it down. Even though this is a history of East and West Germany, we spent our 2 hour class period talking about Saarland, the state I live in. I'm pretty sure we talked about how they could choose which country to be part of after World War Two. I'm not 100% sure though, because during the entire lecture, I only understood about 5% of what he said.

During the first hour, even though I really didn't know what was going on, I copied the notes, tried to understand the guy, and kept telling myself to just hang in there. By the end of the class period, I had pretty much given up trying to comprehend the guy, and was just waiting for the class to be over. Apparantly, my listening comprehension needs some work.

After class I went to see my friend Kelleen. She said, "Well, look at it this way. You just are diving head first into the language." Yep. That fits. Today I went diving. It may have been 3 months after my arrival in Germany... but it was still quite difficult.

For all those times I complained about my college or high school courses being "so hard" and for all the times I thought I'd die because I hadn't studied for a test.... I'm sorry. Can I take it all back? At least then it was all in a language I understood well. Now, my goal is to just understand the language... and I have two more normal classes this week still!

On the bright side, in Germany we only have one test at the very end. That means, I have until February to figure this all out.