I have completed my first 2 days of German class! It is, as they said, "intensive." Our class is made up of about zwanzig (twenty in German, haha) students, coming from all over the world. There are people from Spain, L.A., Italy, Oregon, Iceland, Russia, Canada, New York, Pennsylvania, Boston, and... of course, KENTUCKY! I knew a few people in there already, but I'm the only one representing our fair state.... I'll do my best! As for the professor -- she is quite capable of speaking English, but just chooses NOT to. The first 10 minutes of class yesterday proved to be quite a struggle, because I wasn't quite sure what on earth she was talking about. It's very interesting, though, and I am actually learning things. This immersion-type experience really forces you to listen and think.

So far, I have learned how to introduce myself and others, tell about my day, ask about people's names, countries of origin, age, telephone numbers (I guess they expect people to fall in love with foreigners or something, haha), occupations, etc. We also have been learning about the simple conjucations of verbs, the masculine/feminine articles, and how to count to 100! That's pretty impressive, let me tell you! I had to recite my phone number to the entire class, and I got a "sehr gut!" from the professor.... from what I can tell, that's praise, lol. Once we've learned a new Frage und Anwert (question and answer), we pass this little green beanbag worm around the room and ask and answer the other people in the class. We were asking our ages today, and one of the Russian girls in my class, Olga, tossed the wormie to our teacher and said, "Und du?" (which means "and you?") The professor simply said in German, "old." We all thought that was really funny. Also, apparently the word for CD-player (and other electronics) is masculine, and the word for University is feminine..... I take that to mean that men listen to a lot of music and watch tv, wasting their brains away to mush, while we women have deep conversations about existentialism and books. Way to go ladies!

After German class, we ate lunch at the Student Cafe, called The Menza. It's pretty cheap, and really tasty, so I was pumped. I had schnitzel again!

The wierd thing about European universities is that I have one, maybe two, classes per week. Some classes only meet 5 times the entire semester! I think that the idea is more of an independent study, where we will have a lot of work to do on our own, and not much "instruction." They just throw us in and expect us to swim, I guess! :)