So I have been with my host family for a week now. I have lived in Germany for only a mere four weeks and I have a long time left. First I will talk a little bit about my host family, the German language, and then I will talk about my community.
I arrived in Villingen about 7 p.m. so there was not much we could do the first day except show me around the house. The second day was a lot of fun because my host family and I went mountain biking in the surrounding area and it was soo beautiful. We went about 20 miles and saw the amazing countryside. Wed-Thurs we went mountain biking again in Switzerland and this time we went 80 miles. We got up around 6 and went to Switzerland. Got on our bikes around 10 and biked till 10 that night. The next day was the same schedule and it was a lot of work but it was so much fun and I can’t wait to do it again. My host family is great and they’re really nice and patient with my lacking German skills.
It’s very difficult living here with only four weeks of German experience. It was cool at first to hear different tones and be surrounded in a new language 24/7. But the exoticness of that has worn off and it is miserable to never know what’s going on. When my host brother is around he translates everything for me, but it’s amazingly difficult to be so limited. Sometimes I go to a quiet place where I can’t hear anyone talking so I don’t have to listen and get frustrated. On a good note, my German has gone from zero, four weeks ago, to MUCH better comprehension. If people talk simple enough I can understand and respond back. Imagine being in Spanish class or even German class from when you wake up to when you go to bed. It takes a lot out of you and that is why sometimes I get really tired of listening to it. I can’t even imagine what it’s going to be like when school starts in a week. Overall, I really enjoy it here and only the language is frustrating, but hopefully that will come within the next few months.
I joined Bernhard’s soccer team and I’ve been going to all of the practices. When the coach tells us to do something I, of course, have no idea what he’s saying so I just do what everyone else is doing. Apparently I did something wrong at one point because he walked up to me talking in very rapid German and pointing all over the place. At the end he said ‘Ok?’ and I said ‘yep’ and then I rapidly walked away. I hope he wasn’t offended. Sometimes it’s very comical what Germans ask me. In German you never say ‘do you want something’ or what sports do you like’ do, does, doesn’t, all of the alike are never used. They use make a lot more. Someone asked me what sports i made in America. He directly translated his German sentence and it sounded extremely weird. Someone also asked me if Americans really eat Mcdonalds all day. There is not much to say to that except ‘some do and some don’t.’ One really nice thing about Germany is how close everything is. They have 82 million people living in a country a little smaller than Montana. It has almost 100x’s the population of Montana and the same area. Yet, somehow, about 33 percent of the land is forests and plains. I applaud the Germans for this. But why this is nice is because you can ride a bike ANYWHERE. School is a mile away and so are all the stores you’d ever need. I’ve only been a car once this week and that was to and from Switzerland. In America, my school was a 45 minute drive and now school is a 8 minute bike ride. Another thing that is big over here is “Wasser mit Sprudel” which is carbonated water. The first time I had it was in Language Camp and I absolutely hated it. Now, I can hardly have anything to drink without it. Germans have it at almost every meal. They add a little carbonated water to a glass and fill the rest of the glass up with juice. Sometimes just plain old carbonated water. It has really grown on me and now when I drink regular water it’s not very good. In Britain and America the major meal is generally for dinner. In Germany the main meal is generally for lunch and bread and cold meat is generally served for breakfast and dinner. Something that has surprised quite a bit is how much English you can find here. I would say about 70% of all t-shirts are in English and 10% have nothing on them and the other 20% are in German. Stores have a lot of advertisements in English and many billboards are English too. at least 70% of all the music I hear is English too. They love talking about England and America and those countries are constantly in the news. English classes are compulsory from about 6 to the time you graduate college. I asked a German about what she thought of English and it seems like the general consenus is that English is hip and modern. It’s also an extremely easy language to learn. We have one the, one a, and no genders. German has four ways to make a word plural and everything is heavily inflected where as English has very little inflection and generally only one way to make words plural. The only hard thing about English is spelling and idioms, but to get your point across and have a good conversation takes very little experience. So Germans see the fruit of their labor very quickly when studying English and it is a good motivator. Not everyone works hard in school so sometimes Germans’ have very broken English. Like when I was asked by someone who had finished highschool what sports i made in America. The autobahn is also a lot of fun. When we were going to Switzerland we were probably going 90 and a Corvette went screaming by in the fast lane. He had to be going 150 at least. It was like we were parked on the side of the road. Gas is very expensive here and so are cars and insurance too. Thus, bikes are very, very popular and sometimes I see women who look at least 85 riding a bike. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone above the age of forty riding a bike in America. One time I saw a business man in a suit, tie and all of the above riding a bike through the city. It’s completely normal here, but things like that always make me chuckle.
Until next time!
SpecificallyGermany 