Institute

Everyone,

My class at the Goethe Institute is going just fine now. I was really worried at first that five hours per day in the same room was going to turn out to be too much, but it goes by really fast, and I love the way my teacher talks, so it feels like the time flies.

There are people from all over the world in my class--Brazil, Cambodia, Spain, Turkey, and NORTH Korea (!). Everyone's very nice, but sometimes it's hard to understand people. It's different than taking a German class at BYU becuase often times, German is the only way we can communicate with each other; we don't have another choice. But I must say that it's interesting that a lot of the students will default into English when they don't know the German word. English really is where it's at. We have to work in parters a ton and I kind of get tired of that, but that's ok. Things at the Goethe Institute have worked out just fine.

The other day in class, we read a story about a kid who was a punk, wore punk clothes, and had a mowhawk and because of all this, he couldn't get a job. Then we had to divide into two groups--one saying that he is responsible to change his look and do what it takes to get a job, and the other saying that he should be able to get a job despite his look. There was another lady from America named Judith in our group (the one saying he should just change his look if he really wants a job) and as the arguement was getting way more heated than it needed to, she started saying something like, "well in America, you can't get unemployment pay...". Right after she said "America", the teacher was very quick to point out that we were in Germany. It kind of made me cringe to hear that student say that. And then I thought it was interesting that anyone else from another country could have said something similar to what Judith said, and I probably wouldn't have thought twice about it. It's weird that that's how things work.

I'm a little bit nervous about getting everything I need to get done done. We've got this major assignmet where we're supposed to see 100 examples of different kinds of architecture or art or objects and write a one page paper on each one. I've only got about 15 or 20 finished. It's going to be a busy next couple of weeks.

I sat in on a discussion with the missionaries tonight with a guy who is really close to setting a baptismal date. Naturally, I was pretty quiet, but I said a few things (some in English becuase he understood English), but I tried my best at German. It's still terrible, but it's getting better. That was cool to see missionary work in another language. I've only seen it in Spanish a few times before, so it was cool to see it in German.

It's really cool to be feeling more at home here. The my hostlady is out of town for a few days, but no big deal. She told us when she gets back, she will have a little more time and can cook for us. I'm excited for that.

I'll write again soon. With pictures.