German Immersion

Last night in class I was submerged in the German language. Yes class is full immersion. It was weird and yet not. I kept thinking to myself that I needed to hear English but then I thought hey I'm living and breathing German everyday so do I really need to hear English?? Once I answered my question with a resounding NO I was more at ease with the class, my teacher and the students around me.

Everyone in the class seems really nice. I'm the only person from the US. We only had two people from the same country; Italy. It's fun to have such a diverse group of folks in one class. The teacher didn't speak English until the end when she wrote the word, "Hausaufgaben" and we all looked blankly at her. She smiled and said I won't speak much English to you but in this case the word I wrote means HOMEWORK. We all laughed. It's weird that everyone in class speaks English. ha ha

So what did we learn? Well, we learned how to say (formally and informally) how are you, my name is xxx (or I'm called xxx), I'm from xxx and I speak xxx. We learned the Alphabet and numbers 0-10. It was fun. The three hours went really fast. We had one 15 minute break (the German's call it a pause) to do whatever we needed to do (bathroom, drink, eat, talk, smoke, etc.). I didn't bring anything with me but on Thursday I'll bring some food and something to drink. I did get myself some water to at least wet my whistle. I was starved by the time I got home at 10 p.m. so I stopped at Dos (nearby Mexican restaurant -- it's okay) for a chicken burrito.

All-in-all the experience was good. A few words and phrases were new to me which was nice and the rest was review. As I've mentioned in earlier posts I've been using the workbook "German in 10 minutes a day" to study the language. What I learned last night is toward the middle of my book. I think the book I have is really for folks who need to speak German NOW 'cus they're going on a trip or are on a trip and need to be able to interact with the folks around them. You get a lot quickly which I liked but half of what I've learned so far from the book we didn't even talk about in class. I suppose since I have German class three nights a week for three hours each time I'm sure we'll get to IT, but I was hoping last night to hear the words and phrases that I've learned so far. I guess I just have to be patient :-) I'm probably going to get what I asked for on Thursday. ha ha