Friday, December 04, 2009

Not quite there but on the right track.

So i made it through the second week of classes. And although i'm still rather rusty when it comes to speaking, i find that i can comprehend majority of what is being discussed. My conversations with classmates during the breaks and in class are usually in broken German but i guess that gets better over time. But sometimes when i get home and i'm speaking with J, i find myself sometimes having issues talking in English!

I spend half my day trying to get my sentences grammatically correct in one language and when i switch to English, it's throws me off balance. Or like when i know what something is in German, my mind needs time to fish out what the word is in English.

But you'll be happy to know, that i've started to include a few German phrases and words in the conversations i have with J. Well it's more like a combination of German and English words strung together to make sentences. Because sometimes using the German word is much faster than trying to figure out what it is in English.

Maybe i'm a little bit more confident, so it makes it a little easier.

The other morning i even had a brief conversation with one of the bus drivers. There's this one bus driver that charges me only the short trip fare when in really he should charge me the full-trip price because it's more than 'X' amount of stops to my destination. It's only 60 cents cheaper but when you're counting your pennies, every cent counts. Technically he shouldn't but i guess he's just a really nice guy.

So anyway, the questions were pretty basic; Where are you from? What do you do? Are you married? etc and i was happy to say i was able to answer him back... in German - hopefully grammatically correct.

He didn't look confused or thought i was speaking some other language, so that's a good sign.


As for the weather, it's absolutely freezing. Literally.

The other morning was so cold, i could barely feel my fingers. I think it was -2˙C. Our neighbors hedge looked like it was dusted with icing sugar. So i left the house more than happy to wear my feather-down puffy jacket. Not the most flattering cut since i look like a bloated marshmallow but it sure shields me from the icy wind. The weatherman hasn't mentioned anything about snow in this area but i'm guessing it'll come later.

Christmas + snow = a nice combination.

But in a few hours i'll be getting on a train to Hannover. It's only an hour away, so it's not that far. J had a meeting in Hamburg this morning, which is further north and takes 3 hours to drive, so we're meeting at the half way point. Then we're driving to his parents' house which is about 40 minutes away. J's dad, who so happens to work in Malaysia, is in Germany for a visit, so we figured we'd drop by and spend the weekend there.

Anyway, i better sort out what i need to bring since i have a habit of looking like a bag-lady with way too many things.

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend and i'll be back soon...

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