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Published: October 24th 2005
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Yeah, so the beautiful weather is gone. Now it's rainy, cold, and gloomy. Oh well, gotta love the German weather. It's supposed to be rainy till at least Mon. (can't complain too much, the rain is the reason everything stays nice and green). Things have been going well here. Dinner Tue. night was fun. We went to a restaraunt not far from campus, Weingot Gehlen. It was pretty good. We were two different groups that went, so we pretty much filled the little restaurant. The restaurant was down in a cellar and was filled with all kinds of wine. We of course had wine with dinner (even those that would've prefered beer drank wine cause they didn't serve beer). I definitely knew I was in wine country after finding out they didn't serve beer there. It's probably the only place I've been to so far in Germany that doesn't serve beer. I mean, you can even get beer at McDonald's here! lol.... After dinner we all took the bus into the city and hung out at one of the bars for a while. Was a pretty cool night.
Nothing really exciting happened yesterday. Today in class we talked about the
different influences on the German language and how the language has been changing in recent years. It was really interesting. My partner and I read an article about english words in the German language... there are a lot of em. We also discussed the effect the women's emancipation movement has had on the language. It's a very noticeable change. After our break we looked at the 'language of the youth'. We read a letter written by a guy in 'Umgangssprache' (slang). I couldn't understand a single thing in the letter!!! (And I know quite a bit of slang... or at least thought I had.... from all my friends) I understood a lot of the words, but what any of it meant was over all of our heads! Was quite a helpless feeling to be looking at a letter that I 'should' be able to understand (It was afterall all German) and yet couldn't. It was also fun to learn a bunch of the slang. I'm gonna have to remember some of the phrases in the letter so I can use em in conversations with other students.... hehe =)....
This afternoon I went and bought my BahnCard at the train station (a card that allows me to ride the train for cheaper). The lady that was helping my was extremely nice. After she was done with the form and everything she asked me what the english word for das Abonnement was (it's subscription). She knew I was American from my credit card. She said she had had to explain it to a customer in english earlier and neither she or her colleagues knew what it was. I offered to write it down for her and she was very thankful... it felt good to be able to help out. =) (especially since she had been very friendly while helping me buy my BahnCard)
I've gotta go now... the comp lab is gonna close soon. Time to head back to my place and study more German grammar and vocab words. Take care! Ciao!
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