SPD ftw!

So i would just like to take a moment to let all of the readers out there that if you ever plan on taking a German politics course at a German Uni, then you would do well to prepare yourself for unreasonable amounts of horridly boring and tedious reading. Well thats not to say that its exactly an unreasonable amount. In terms of pure page numbers its pretty light. But when taken into consideration that its all auf Deutsch with tons of new and interesting words i do not know, it makes sense that my reading speed slows to 10 pages an hour. And let me please clarify before anyone jumps to the conclusion that since i read slow i suck at German, i certainly do not. These politics readings are the types of readings that would still take me a boring painful hour or so to get through in english. So you can that imagine trying to do reading for a tedious topic in a completely different language could possiblely not be fun. However when it comes to reading German fiction i have no problem sitting down and getting through it staying focused. When im reading fiction i tend not to stop to look up very many words, i try to power through and get the meaning of words from context. At a maximum for fiction books i try to limit myself to 5 words or so per two pages depending on the size of the book and what its about. That way you dont get stuck in the rut where it takes you an hour to read an entire page of your book because you've looked up everyword. As for reading the newpaper usually i try not to look up any words when im reading the paper. Maybe a word or two from the headlines, but usually i dont look up anything. Now that i think about i guess this is strange. But its been working for me so far. This past week i have determined that a large part of the short comings of my listing comprehension is my lack of more German vocab. I have the distinct disadvantage of this only being the third year that i am studying German. Whereas most of the other foreign students here have been studying German for 4 or more years. So just by having more exposure to it in the classroom than i have had will allow for them to have a bigger German vocab. Which has lead me to resolve myself to improve my vocab. I got me a nice new comprehensive German to English dictionary and will begin keeping a little dictionary of my own of words i encounter around and will be making study lists from them. I put it on here so that i have some accountability for keeping up with my vocab. GENAU! Ummmm yes i do believe that is it for the time being so enjoy this awesome trailer for the new Fatih Akin movie!

What a WEEK!

Yes indeed what a week it has been. Where to begin. Well last friday (the 13th!!) I and a few friends went to go check out Passion Pit in Munich. Which was beyond awesome. If you have the means i would highly suggest going to check them out. It was in this small club in downtown Munich called "59to1" it was sIIck! However what was not quite as sick was the 6 hour total train ride back from Munich. So we left Würzburg around 6pm and we did not return to Würzburg until nearly 8am this following morning. Pretty crazy. But the fast paced week does not end there. From there i had to grab a couple hours of Zs and then get myself up to Frankfurt airport to go and pick up my Father and bring him back to Würzburg. Which ended up going smoother than i would have thought. And we spent the weekend doing all the super crazy cool things there are to do here in Würzburg. I would say it was a weekend well spent. The admiral left on Tuesday morning, extremely early. I dont think i ever want to wake up at 5am again. I accompanied him up to the airport and got him all situated there before returning back to Wü for my evening classes, and karoke later that night. Then umm yea wednesday, thursday, and friday were pretty much a blur of being overtired, classes, and fighting with german burecrats over my passport. That last one was annoying as all hell BUT! i am not officially in with the city and i feel good about it. Ummm yea so things here are still going pretty well. Classes are kicking into the normal gears of stuff. Fair amounts of work to be done this weekend. But i am meeting more cool Germans which is awesome. I got to meet my face2face speaking partner yesterday. Face2face is a program put on by the language center here in Würzburg. Where you register online with them and tell them what your main language is and what language you want to learn. And they match you up with someone who's main language is the one you want to learn and who wants to learn your main language. so its pretty cool. And you actually get credit for it as well, which rocks. But ich muss jetzt gehen. Bis später internet.

I SAW THE SUN TODAY!

Yea i did see the sun today! but only for a little bit. The weather here has been pretty gray and gloomy for a while now. Probably for the last week or so. But its still pretty nice. Good studying weather i would say. Ummm well things here are pretty good so far. Class is moving right along with the a frightening speed. Soon it'll be Decemeber, then christmas, then next semester then back home. Its really strange how fast time is moving along. But i'm loving it here so far, and i can only think it'll get better. So far my classes are not too much work. Most of the work i do for them is self imposed work i do on my own because i believe i need the practice or the extra review of the notes. My Mittlestufe class has been pretty easy so far with the teacher moving really slowly. But we actually did something today so i think it's gonna be picking up from here out. My goal is literally beat this Mittlestufe test to death so that i can place into the second level of the Oberstufe next semester. Dunno if they let me place but i can still rock out all over the Mittlestufe test. And if you doubt my sincerity, i have already started memorzing lists of verbs with prepositions for the test. SO BAM! My two real university classes are pretty awesome far. The political science class is pretty hard i would say. Because the teacher talks pretty fast, with a low voice, in a very echoy room which makes it hard for me to get everything he says in class. I must look like a mental patient in that class. I'm always in the 2nd or 3rd row, sitting straight up, on the edge of my seat listening to every word the professor says. Lucky he puts the notes up online after the class so i am able to take my time and go over them on my own outside of class so i dont fall behind. Thing is he doesnt do it in any sort of timely fashion. The class may be difficult but i am up for the challenge! OH! And one further development in my time here. The other night i had a slighty random encounter with this dude who runs a small theatre group in town. I was talking with one of my english friends here outside my building and he sort of just came out of the darkness and asked us if we were native english speakers. To which i replied yes of course. Apparently his group is doing an evening of Harold Pinter plays and he looking for more male actors who can speak english, since the plays are in english. So i gave him my number, and met up with him this evening to talk about what he wanted for the remaining roles. We did a few lines and he said he would like to have me aborad. So BAM! Now i am a part of a German theatre group doing english plays! Maybe not the best thing for my German, because the play is in english. BUT! the other kids that are already in the group are all Germans and so i am going to get to meet some more Germans! Which is flippin awesome because its really hard to meet Germans in the regular uni classes i have because they're so big. So i'll get to meet some more Germans and get more opportunities to practice my spoken German outside of class, and drunken bar encounters. So yea things are working out quite well quite well indeed! And in honor of the Wall here is a song about Germany. Awesome song.

Mein Schatz............

So tonight the big cinema in town had a special program called "Männer Abend" which is supposed to be a man's night at the cinema. And this month they had the second Lord of the Rings movie. Which was really cool auf Englisch but auf Deutsch is almost better. Gotta say i forgot how good those movies were. Seeing it again and auf Deutsch was a good idea. The characters really speak relatively slowly in the movies so it was a little easier for me to pick up the German word for word. Or if i didnt know what they were talking about i could think back the to the English version and plug in what i thought the conversation was. So it was a good experience for my Hören Kentnisse. Not that everything was really slow. But the dialogue was a little slower than i remember it being. But still AWESOME! And i also just tried me some Gluwein with a couple of Germans who live in my building. That stuff is interesting. For those that dont know, its sort of like a spiced wine thats served hot. Pretty much its a christmas thing around Germany. Its not too too sweet but not really bitter either. It certainly warrents more tasting! I believe thats it for now. Ummm classes are good, just wish there was more grammar in my German class, but beyond that not too bad. WORD!!!!! check out this awesome german musik video if you like zombies and Shaun of the Dead.

Stirbt Langsam

SO! Alright so first week of classes = done and week two has begun. Things are picking up here. At least in terms of getting myself into a rythum of how i do what i need to get done. The last couple classes of last week went smoothly and were promptly followed by a party hardy weekend! Friday was friday just plain being friday! You really can't blame him for all the stuff he does to young people who want to blow off steam on his day. But you can be sure he leaves you with headaches and raspy voices the next day. Saturday was Halloween. Which was interesting. Halloween is pretty much non-exsistant here. There was a little party at one of the dorms in town, but that was really the only legit Halloween party going on last weekend. For probably two reasons: 1. Halloween just isnt big here. In the states its so commercial thats its hard to avoid buying arm loads of candy at the seasonal bargin prices just in case. Along with whatever you do for your Halloween. Germans know about Halloween but they don't really care about it. Maybe a little party or two, but they will never achieve the total and unmericful commercialization of the holiday like Americans. 2. And two apparently in Würzburg "All Saints Day" is a real big deal. By law all club like establishments had to be closed at midnight on November 1st. So literally on November 1st dancing and having fun is sorts of illegal. Which is probably why none of the clubs in town did any sort of Halloweeny stuff. Why bother if you just have to stop at 12. But from what i can tell so far, Christmas is going to flippin huge here. Like epic proportions. Literally the shops already have their Christmas displays out, selling small stuff mostly. But its still there so its gonna be awesome. Speaking of Christmas actually i just booked my flight to England for the holiday. I'm gonna be spending Xmas with my English buddy Tom and his family. Should be a good time. I'm looking forward to getting to see England. My dad raves about it at times when he is recounting his travels, says its one of the best places. So i'll get to see it this holiday season! And speaking of the admiral, he will be hear pretty soon as well for a weekend visit. Gonna be arockin!!!!