Bye Bye Bonn, recap

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A chapter is closing! From the next 2 weeks I will more or less be doing the 'backpacker' thing and without a forsure bed to sleep in every night Oy. Not exactly looking forward to it.

I changed my plans again about going to München. It's sort of a lame story so I don't want to talk about it. Yes, as if talking about getting locked in my room isn't lame...

Where am I sleeping tonight? Most likely in the Köln airport.

Where will I be sleeping tomorrow night? Most likely in Luxemburg.

How am I getting to Lux? Haven't figured that part out yet. But keine Panik.

I've got this crazy idea that Lux is a really cool country, if only people knew! Ok, so the main reason I'm going there is because it borders Germany and is not as far as the Netherlands, but still, I am sure it's really cool!

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I got the highest grade in my class. Neener neener neeener. But it's really not much to gloat about; my German still borders on sucky and I can only say really simple things.

But here comes the gloating part. I got the highest possible mark in all five sections of the test: hearing, grammar, reading, writing (a short letter), and speaking. That means that in each area I got an A. :) There are folks who got A's in 3 or 4 of the sections but then didn't do so well in the others. This means that I was all around pretty good. :) Yeay!

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I scored 'GUT' on the Zertifikat Deutsch test. That is equivalent to a B. Ok, here comes the stereotypical overachiever talk (even though I'm really not an overachiever).

I know I could've done better. :-/

What tanked me was the 25% points that had to come from the oral test. There were 4 sections to it: first was free form talking with the 2 proctors; then came two articles that I had to read, digest, and give my analyses of back to the proctors; and last was a pretend childrens party that I had to throw and I had to speak with the proctors about how to plan for it.

So the first part free form was like: where are you from, how did you end up here, why are you learning German (cuz I don't exactly look German...) and what did you do before you got here...

The where you come from part -- easy.

The how did you end up here part -- not so easy. How do I explain that I lost my job, decided to go travel, went to 6 other countries first, and my mom told me to come to Germany because it's safer than eastern Europe and she worries about me traveling alone in what used to be communist countries? Whatever I say would just open the door to more questions that I can't answer!

The why am I learning German part -- also difficult. How do I explain because I needed a place to sleep for a month and I'm mostly interested in the bed that they offered here, not the lessons? That would just be rude.

Then the what did you do before you got here -- ÜBER difficult. I can't even clearly describe it in English! I'm pretty sure that had I said 'I habe Lampen studiert' it would have been grammatically correct but they would've thought I meant something else. No... I really did study lightbulbs. But then I don't have any idea how to explain it farther.

So yeah, that first part didn't go over well.

Then the 2nd two parts where I had to read the articles, digest, and then regurgitate. Guess what kind of articles I got.
I got one article that was 'the dream jobs of German youths' and the other was 'the jobs of the German populace'. I sighed such a heavy sigh when I was handed the articles. This is the LAST thing that I want to talk about. Personally, it's a deadhorse. I do not want to talk about jobs, dream jobs, future jobs, past jobs, current jobs, NO JOBS! Oh why do they torture me with this?! I don't want to think about jobs! I came traveling to forget about jobs and here this darned topic keeps coming up!

So yeah, that second part didn't go over well either.

When I handed back the articles to the lady proctor (who also happened to be my regular teacher), I told her in German that this is a really bad topic for me because it's been asked a lot, I have nothing to say, everyone wants to know what I will do when I get home, I don't care, and I have nothing interesting that I want to say on this topic.

And guess what she said.
She said, well, yea, there are only certain topics that we can talk about because we are at the groundlevel (lower level). If we don't talk about jobs, we would have to ask you about what you like to eat.

Oh MY GAWD! I would've jumped for joy for that topic! I could talk for hours at great detail about my particular diet, I know all the vocabulary for food items and I can tell them what I've cooked while I've been here, what I ate while I was in Poland, what I ate while I was in Finland, etc etc!

Why didn't I get that topic instead? Why did I have to get the shitty job topic?

That really frustrated me. It just wasn't my day, I bet the girl behind me go the food question.

But still. I got a B, which I guess is pretty good.

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