And so begins my academic life in Germany...

On Friday, I went to go get introduced to the German course. It was introduced by the man I will later refer to as 'Dr. Clever' and a guy who looks exactly like Tchéky Karyo (see photo). Anyhoo, my course has a very interesting composition. I have yet to meet a single native speaker of English since I arrived in Germany (no Americans, no English, no Canadians, no Australians, no New Zealanders- you get the point). My class has about 6 Russians (Russians cannot pronounce things in German, I should note). A Ukrainian (Russian speaking, not Ukrainian-speaking), a Brazilian, a Swede*, a Japanese girl*, 2 guys from Yemen, a Jordanian*, and 1 more that speaks Arabic (not sure which country), a Turk, a Georgian*, 2 Francophones from Cameroon, an Italian, a Thai fellow*, a Vietnamese guy who's lived in Bulgaria since he was 9, and there should be 4 more, but I can't for the life of me remember who they are. (*= able to speak at least a little English).
Dr. Clever is called that because pretty much everyone is convinced he speaks at least 5 languages fluently. If the Italian is having trouble, he helps in Italian. I haven't needed help, but he uses English phrases all the time (no German accent- that's a first) he clearly speaks French, and maybe Turkish and Arabic. At the very least, he know what he's doing. He teaches hearing understanding.
Our reading understanding teacher also seems quite competent, although the name game she had us play was kind of Elementary-age summer-camp-esque.
Then we come to the Grammar teacher. I don't blame for not anticipating our skill level exactly, but I do blame for refusing to deviate from his lesson plan when he was clearly a few hundred levels below our skill level. He walked into the class and says, painfully slowly 'ich heiße (removed). I-ch. h-ei-ß-e. (removed)." (for the uninitiated, 'ß' is actually 'ss'). First he had us go around and ask each other such posers as 'Wie heißt du?' (how are you called?) 'Woher kommst du?' (from where do you come?) 'Wie alt alt bist du?' (how old are you?) 'Was machst du gern?' (what do you like doing?) - he warned us that we shouldn't worry too much about the last question, because it's very difficult. He then proceeded to teach us the Roman alphabet- he made sure to show us upper and lower case letters- then he went through the German names for the letters and the sounds that each word makes. Then we did numbers. He handed out a sheet with questions like "vier - zwei =" (four - two =), and appeared rather horrified when he realised that the entire class had finished his sheet (which he had begun guiding us slowly through) in less than a minute. Instead of taking the hint, he went through the questions one by one, then we spent the rest of the class writing sentences to go with pictures of such things as a boy walking. If we used 'complex' things like indefinite articles ('an apple' instead of 'the apple') he changed them on the board. So we (who are mostly communicating with each other in German) were introduced to two-word sentences today. Such enthralling sentences as 'Die Ente schwimmt' (the duck swims.) 'Er lauft' (he runs) 'Die Kinder singen' (the children sing)- the list goes on. Then he gave us a homework sheet of more of the same. So all in all, 2/3 of the course are very good, but I have a feeling grammar will be a monumental waste of time.

The pictures above are the parking lot below my window on 1.) a rainy day and 2.) today. It was raining really hard, and I was like 'gosh, it's raining really hard' to myself and then I read my book some more, and then suddenly I realised I couldn't even hear the music my computer was playing, and I looked up, and visibility was about 4 metres- from rain! It wasn't even foggy- it was only raining. I was like 'it can't get worse than this'. So, of course, it did. I turned up my music and read some more. Then I couldn't hear my music again! It was raining even bloody harder. And unlike Calgary, where rain like this rains itself out after about 5 minutes, it kept raining that hard for 10 hours. The two days before rained, and the two days after rained. Where does all that water come from?