Well, I'm mostly German now. A little bit German. OK! FINE! I'm not German at all, but I've been trying so hard, for over a year now, give me a break! I have really tried to embrace the German language and learn as much as I can as fast as I can. I thought I wasn't doing too bad, I mean I know some people that don't know any German at all. At least I can ask where things are, kinda read labels and directions on foods, order at restaurants and decipher enough of the description on vacation that we learn who and what each monument is for.
Side story (it's related to the topic at hand, cut me some slack already!) - I was in the grocery store, in line to buy things (by myself without corn niblet and sweet pea there chattering away in English, so read that as meaning I was quiet and not speaking at all) behind these loud Americans that had randomly thrown a lipstick in with their purchases and was stunned to hear it was a €15 tube of lipstick. They wanted to put it back, but the checker would have had to call over a manger to do that so one girl convinced the other girl to buy it. But the lipstick purchasing girl went on and on about how she couldn't believe she was having to buy a $25 tube of lipstick etc. Well anyway, they left, the checker said Hallo to me, I said Hallo back and then she told me my total in English, looked up and said I'm sorry in German and repeated the amount in German! I was shocked she thought I was German! Damned I'm getting good at this Hallo thing! I must have shed that American t-shirt tennis shoes and jeans look! I mumbled the numbers I knew as I looked for the exact change, and then of course had to say Dankeshün with my very pronounced American accent! Oh well, it was fun while it lasted!
OK, so back to me thinking I'm European. I can kinda follow the news on the radio now, and I only get the wide-eyed-blinking-doe-in-headlights look to me when people talk too fast. This I usually recover from within an awkard moment or 2, or 3 (ok I'm sure it doesn't take me longer than 5 minutes to figure out what they've said to me!). All in all I get around easily enough for my entire family to turn to me to accomplish everything while we're out and about!
Then, the other night, trajedy struck... in one night:
I had a friend "tell me" (well post a comment on a fb post, but that's telling me because I still don't get alot of social interaction and I have to talk to people however I can get it these days!) that I should stop murdering the German language! what ever, BGSU/ROTC friend of J man and FORMER friend of mine! See if I ever "talk" to you in German again! (Don't worry, he won't have a clue that I'm talking about him here!)
Because of that I decided that I should take a German language course here. I began looking them up online, only to find out that the only classes I could locate (with my obviously "POOR" German reading ability) were Monday through Friday from 9am to 12:30pm!!! WTH?!? Do all of the other non-German speaking population out there not have jobs?!?! I won't even mention the cost of them, because €1200 is completely reasonable to take a 6 month long, 5 day a week, 3 1/2 hour class that will allow me to order food correctly and impress my bakery ladies (but still won't rid me of my American accent)!
I was almost done with my humiliation for the night, when I got a brilliant idea to take an online placement test. I've been in Germany for a while now, I
So, I'm pretty sure I'm gonna be making the following phone call:
Me: "Hallo, Fritz?"
F: "Ja"
Me: "I understand you tutor Americans in German lessons?"
F: "Ja"
Me: "I'd like to start some lessons with you"
F: "What was your online placement score?"
{insert cricket sounds here}
