Mit dem Struggle Bus fahren

Hallo, Lesungen...und Kaffee, viel Kaffee. 

Otherwise known as Sarah's first week of classes

So it's time for me to regale you all with stories of my misadventures/me making a fool out of myself. Which, as you all know, it nothing out of the ordinary, but with the whole language barrier thing, me looking foolish is somewhat more common. 

To begin, it turns out I missed two classes last week by thinking that they started this week. I blame the internet. (They decided to change the start date of the classes after I printed out my schedule.) So when I waltzed into my Economics of Development class on Tuesday morning at 8AM (which is really damn early, by the way), I was already a week behind. Turns out they already learned about the Cobb-Douglas Model and the Solow Model, which both are big scary equation-oriented number things. The Solow model involves k being a variable for literally everything. It means capital per worker, but then you have k with a dot above it, k with a hat, k with a tilde, k with a dot and a tilde, then there's capital K and the party gets even better. Needless to say, my head exploded. I also had to ask my professor what ILIAS (which is the equivalent of Trunk) was. He then proceeded to look at me like I had a third eye. I explained that I was just a clueless Austauschstudentin, and he looked at me a little less strangely. He gave me a password to register for our class, which I later tried and, naturally, it didn't work. Then I wrote the TA, accidentally addressing him as the professor, to try and fix said problem and looked even more clueless. But at least I got the right password in the end. So that's my story about econ. 

I also had Spiegelschrift II on Tuesday, which went smoothly. It's an ADaF (Deutsch als Fremdsprache) Kurs; therefore, they talk very slowly and clearly. Since this is my creative writing course, they assigned us 2 pages worth of writing on anything we want. I'll write up what I wrote and post it later. (Sorry, non-German speakers, it's going to be entirely in German.) 

Wednesday, my day began at 10AM with Geschichte der Internationalen Politik. This was the class that I had shown up for last week, even though it started this week. Unfortunately, however, similar to last week, there were still jackhammers going off in the building. So hearing the professor--more or less understanding him--was a struggle. Luckily, this was only in the beginning, and afterwards, he became relatively understandable. It's funny, because you kind of just have to accept that you won't understand every word he says and really just focus on getting a general meaning of what he's (as all of my professors for my Universität Kurse, with the exception of art and my ADaF Kurs, are male) talking about. It's kind of a weird thing to get used, but once you do that, life becomes far less stressful. 


Later, after spending sometime running around the Altstadt trying to get my life in Economics of Development together, I had Deutschland/die EU in der Internationalen Politik, which is a super awesome class for a few reasons. The first: it's a big Deutsch Kompakt party. There are 5 of us and one of our Tutorins in the class. Also one of my German friends that I met at the Unterwegs gathering (the one that I mentioned in the last post) is also in the class, and she's super great and funny. The second reason is that the professor is super excited about what he's doing, and, from what I hear, really cares about his students. The third is that it's poli sci, and I am a huge nerd for this stuff. A small sidenote: I felt like a rockstar when Professor Diez was throwing out all of these political scientists, and I knew a few of them (Robert Keohane and Alexander Wendt, for example) from Intro to IR. Thanks, Professor Eichenberg! :)

Even later on Wednesday, I had art class, which is a ceramics class. I thought that it was at 5, but it actually started at 6. Luckily the building is a five minute walk from my apartment (which is the first time that's happened and is possibly the greatest thing ever), so I went home and took a nap before going back. The professor for this super cool. I believe she's a local artist, and she kind of looks like Diane Keaton, specifically Diane Keaton in Because I Said So. She didn't really have anything for us to do yet, so she explained the semester (we're making drums!) and showed us around. I could have stuck around, but I really needed a nap prior to Deutsch Kompakt Stammtisch. (Which was super crazy, and a group of us ended up in a bar with on of the Deutsch Kompakt Lehrerins, who was rather drunk....God, do I love this country.)

Anyways, today, I woke up at the godforsaken hour of 7AM for my 8AM class in the Hegelbau. It's the only class (besides ADaF and art) that isn't a Vorlesung. To back up: there a few types of classes here. Vorlesungen are the easiest. It's usually just a big lecture, minimal to no required reading, 15 minute speaking final at the end. Then there's Seminars, Repetitoriums, and Übungen, which require more work, depending upon the class. This one, Zeitgeschichte, has a fair amount of reading. (I'm not going to say a lot, because I have taken a class with David Art.) The most challenging part, naturally, is that all of the reading is in German. Which means a lot of time looking up fun words. Some examples of fun new German words I learned this week are: 

• Schwächung: deterioration
• Niederlage: defeat
• Zahlungsbilanzüberschussen: balance of payment surpluses
• Abwertung: devaluation
• Welthegemonialmacht: world hegemonic power 

The funniest thing about writing out all of these words is that their definitions make such sense based upon the words that they combine that it seems silly I required a Wörterbuch to figure them out. Deutsch ist so eine wunderschöne Sprache. 

So, in summary, this week has been rather challenging, as both German  and getting back into school-mode is super hard. The German specifically because I actually have to hear and speak German. Not just the series of memorized lines that I have rolling around in my head ("Ich hätte gern ein Kaffee, bitte." or "Ich studiere Politikwissenschaft.") It's been great, thus far, though. Struggles, moments where I look like a fool, and all. 

Finally, here's another Swedish song that I have been listening to lately. You may ask, "Sarah, this is your study abroad blog. Your German study abroad blog. Why are you posting this Swedish music?" And to that, I say: my blog, I do what I want. 

With that said, bis später, Kinder.