Culture Course and Sightseeing in Dresden

I wish I had some cool stories to tell, but my schedule lately has been wake up, run, class, lunch, sleep, internet time, dinner, homework, internet time, sleep.  My sleep schedule is still really messed up.  I get about 5 or 6 hours a night, and then take a 1 or 2 hour nap in the afternoon.  I suppose all together that's not so bad, but I really wish that I could sleep later in the morning.  Early morning insomnia is not a new problem for me unfortunately. :-(  This past summer I was sleeping in to 10 or later, and it freaked me out because I thought something was wrong with me!

German class on Wednesday wasn't so bad.  We had a test, but it ended up just being a little cartoon without words and we had to write a story to go along with it.  It was mostly about food, and we were allowed to use our dictionaries, so no one complained.  I was positive we were going to have to do more Preposition work too!

We worked on adjective endings, which is my least favorite part of German.  For those of you who haven't studied it, when an adjective precedes a noun in German, you need to give the adjective a case ending based on it's case (Nominative, Accusative, Dative, or Genitive)plus whether the adjective follows a definite article, indefinite article, or no article plus its gender (masc, fem, neut, or plural.)  So all in all each adjective has 48 possible case endings!

Then we started talking about diets in German, which was kinda weird and not so useful.  I think our teacher sensed we weren't into it because then she asked what kinds of things we would enjoy talking about in class (in German, of course!)  I said fairytales, especially those by Brother Grimm.  She said we could probably watch a fairytale cartoon in class.  Anthony wants to talk about Rassismus und Sexismus in Germany (racism and sexism), which of course will be an interesting topic considering the country's history.  Lin wants to talk about German movies (I hope we can talk about some of the horror films too!)  I brought up talking about the Youth Culture here, like the Goths and the Punks and the Techno Kultur.  Everyone in our class got excited about that because we all love our own little niche of German music.  Lin and I also love talking about the different styles of clothes here, although I don't think Anthony is quite as interested as us lol.  Hopefully class will be a little more interesting next week!

This morning we met up with the rest of the Libby's to go to our Kultur Kurs with Herr Zeuner.  It was also entirely in German, although he would use English occasionally to explain things we didn't understand (and by "we" I mostly mean "me" because I asked a lot of questions about words and phrases meant.)  I really want to improve my vocabulary!  We talked about the definition of culture, how it's a collective set of beliefs for certain people and all that.  We also discussed Culture Shock and the 5 different stages one goes through (1. Initial Excitement - 2. Embarrassment Over Mistakes - 3. Finding One's Own Culture Much Better than the Foreign One - 4. Understanding the Differences in the Foreign Culture - 5. Making Mistakes but Understanding Why Those Things Are Mistakes Here.

Herr Zeuner asked us what stage we thought we were in.  We all said 1 or 2.  I think I'm somewhere in-between.  I'm still really excited about being here and having all these new experiences, but I'm getting really frustrated with the communication barrier.  I tend to be pretty outgoing and friendly, but it's hard to make friends here when all I can do is Kinder Sprache (kid speech)!  There are so many things I'd like to say, but then I don't know the words so I have to keep simplifying everything down.  I don't mind telling my teacher "Today I saw a kitten.  He was so cute!", but I'd like to be a little more interesting when talking with the local people my age.  Oli and I have been chatting on Facebook a lot, which is much easier for me because I can throw words into my online dictionary and keep up with the conversation a lot better than when speaking.  I can also say what I'm thinking because I have my translator right in front of me to help out with phrases I don't know.  I would say our conversations are about 50% German, 25% English, and 25% Emoticons and lolz.  Everyone can speak the language of the internet!

After the Culture Course, we went to Koerner Platz in Loschwitz, a suburb of Dresden.  There are quite a few old buildings and museums there.  We all had to write a 3 - 5 minute blurb about one of the historical landmarks we were going to see.  Mine was the Loschwitzer Kirche (the Loschwitz Church.)  It didn't have a very interesting history, except that it was bombed flat during WWII and then didn't get rebuilt until the 90's (one of the DDR youth groups was located there for awhile during the 60's though.)  It also had a big sundial on the top. (check out Facebook for my pictures)

After our tour, we all went to one of the Biergartens on the river.  I stupidly ordered an entire beer, so of course I had a bathroom emergency on the way back.  The Bretzeln were quite delicious and salty though!  We also went to a CD store where I bought Club Nights: Live It! (natürlich!) and then we found a bakery with Black Forest Cake!  I've never seen Lin so excited!

We got back at about 5:30 and had plans to go into Neustadt, but everyone was so tired (we had missed our normal afternoon nap time) so we all fell asleep.  See why I feel like a little kid here? lol