March 01, 2004

German Class, Day 1

Tonight was my first German class and it went well. There are 9 people in my class, 5 men and 4 women. I am the only American and there's a broad group of people--2 from England, 2 from Turkey, then China, Ghana, Argentina, and India. Our teacher is super-nice--what a relief! He's young and has the most soothing voice. He even breaks the code and speaks some English for us.

I am one of the more knowledgeable people in the class but it's clear that Beginning German is just where I belong. Tonight we only got as far as "What is your name? My name is Shelby." "Who is that? That is Shelby." and "Where do you live? I live in Hamburg." There sure is a difference between a class like this which is conversation-based and a class like the college courses you take where it's writing and grammar based. With this class we jumped right in using words without extended explanations of what they were and what the different conjugations meant. I think this style will be much more useful to me.

In other news, I got my first rejection letter from a grad school. Boy, they sure didn't waste any time with that! It wasn't one of my top choices so I'm not too broken up over it. I think it may still be a while before I hear from the rest.

Posted by Shelby at March 1, 2004 08:42 PM