My first week of regular classes is now over. My first impression is that it’s going to be a difficult semester. Not necessarily because of the content of the classes, but because of German. Some teachers I could understand more than others and it was hard to keep focus on the class. I kept finding that my attention would wonder off and all of a sudden the teacher was talking about a different subject. It’s good German practice though.
I had to rearrange courses due to a problem I had with my Political Stereotypes in Americans Movies on Germany 1933-1945 class. I went to it on Monday and come to find out, the professor combined it with the class directly before it to make the class a 4 hour class. That wouldn’t be a problem except I come directly from another class during that first 2 hour block. So I had to drop it. Fortunately, the university here doesn’t penalize you for dropping courses and they don’t even stay on your record. In that class’s place, I picked up an ancient Greek history course. I think that’s going to be my hardest course because the teacher is from Bavaria and I couldn’t understand a word she was saying because of her accent. I talk to a German girl in that class that I know who also could only understand bits and pieces of what the teacher was saying. I have that class with Hester, the exchange student from England and we went up afterward to the teacher and introduced ourselves and explained that we were having troubles understanding and everything. Hopefully she writes more down that we can copy rather than explain it… or at least hopefully she provides more written something.
Nothing really exciting happened in any of the other classes. I just showed up, took notes and left. Pretty much as you would expect. I’ve already got homework as well as a 2 papers to write. The first paper is due by November 8, but it only has to be 200 words. It’s for my German class for exchange students, so the teacher isn’t expecting perfect German, just a good try. The second paper, however, is going to be really fun. It has to be at least 10 pages and is for my Introduction to teaching German as a foreign/second language course. The teacher there obviously expects really good German. I have until the middle of March to finish it. I did go up and talk to the teacher and explained that I’m an exchange student and everything. She said that when she grades my paper, she’ll correct the grammar, but won’t deduct points for any grammatical mistakes or anything.
Of course the best part of these 2 papers is that both of them are optional. Something I just learned about the German system is that you get credit points based on what you do in the course. If you just show up to every (or almost every) meeting, then you get a certain amount; if you do the papers and assignments, you get more credits; if you take a big exam at the end of the course, you get even more credits; and so on. That means I could get away with not doing the papers or homework, but I wouldn’t get as much credit for the course. I’m going to do the work though because I want to get as much credit out of these courses as possible.
Enough about courses. Tonight I’m going to meet 2 other Americans at the Litfaß restaurant again. Tonight is all you can eat pizza for 3 euros there. Also, every Tuesday night a bunch of us exchange students and several Germans are doing what’s called a Stammtisch (there’s really no equivalent word in English) at Litfaß. A Stammtisch is when people get together to do something on a regular basis. We’re getting together to speak German and to eat spaghetti (Tuesdays are all you can eat spaghetti nights for 3 euros). We’ve met for 3 weeks now and it’s actually been pretty fun. It’s something to look forward to every week anyway.
