About eks
What I'm doing:
I've been learning German at Uni (as a relaxing adjunct to my Psychology studies) for 2 years, and this year I won a scholarship to go to The Land of Sausage for a 6 week language and culture course. = EXCITING. I'll be there for New Year's Eve, as well as a festival they call Karnival and there'll be a week or so after the course for some gadding about before I come back for semester 1 in Australia. I'll be back in early March.
What I'm hoping for:
An eye-opening and heart-warming experience of the enormity and fascination of the big wild world. Naive, yes, but I've never travelled before so give me my moment in the sun here.
Also, of course, the ultimate aim is to learn to speak German properly, and to broaden my horizons and expand my worldview by learning about history and culture and things that exist outside The Lucky Country.
What I'll tell you about:
What it's like, what i see and what i think and what i learn, especially what i learn - while everyone else was saying 'get laid!', 'take drugs!', 'get awesome prices on european cosmetics!', my friend Roy said 'let me know about your language-acquisition learning curve.', and I appreciated that. For this reason, every week or so I'll give you some idea of how the German is going. Of course it will really only make sense to Roy and possibly Justine because the rest of you are either Australians who think I'm swearing at you when I say 'Ich wuensche Ihnen einen schoenen Wochenende!' or native speakers who:
a) know how many mistakes I made in that one sentence and
b) have no idea how difficult it is to memorise 4 cases and 50 bajillion adjective endings along with 3 genders and 2 styles of conversing (Du und Sie) with a fully-developed (debatable, yes.) adult brain*.
*psychology-in-practice fascinating fact #432: adults have a bitch of a time learning second languages. the critical period for language acquisition appears to be 0-7 years of age, possibly up to 12 years for second languages. kids can pick up a second language like they pick up germ-infested insects. German, just another germ-infested insect to them. lucky buggers...
