A Long Week...

That was another long week of classes. They certainly know how to give homework out around here. So here are possibly some funny stories from class. Well, some stories from class anyway.

So my professor for my political science seminar is absolutely hilarious. Her name is Annita (we don't actually use last names much for teachers here), and she is Romanian. Her English is pretty good, and she has a wonderful Romanian accent. She LOVES group work. So basically every class period turns into a giant session where we prepare presentations for the first part of class and then present them in the second part of class. It seems kind of pointless at the time, but I guess a droning lecture is pretty pointless as well. At least this way we're not falling asleep. I still am not a huge fan of group work, but I'm trying to remain positive about it. Anyway, when giving us back our first exams, Annita insisted that each person meet with her for a few minutes individually to talk with her about the exam. So we all had to stay after class one day to chat with her. Class ended at 18.00. I was the 2nd to last person called. I did not get home until 19.30. Yeah I was not too thrilled about that. And then she wants to take the whole class out for drinks/coffee to celebrate our first test. But we keep having to reschedule for various reasons. She is one of the most random teachers I have ever had, but she is still hilarious.

I also have a class on environmental policy. It's pretty interesting, although the professor basically just lectures the whole time. Anyway, yesterday we watched this documentary-type film after class called Home. It was an interesting film, sort of a 2009 version of An Inconvenient Truth, although much less with the charts and the Al Gore lecturing. It was sort of the same type of facts and stuff, but with Planet Earth-type cinematography. Anyway, in my EU-US relations class this morning, we began our unit on environmental policy in the EU and the US. Guess what we did to start the unit? That's right, we watched Home. So I saw it twice in the span of about 16 hours. And then in my Regions of the EU class, we watched Goodbye Lenin. So it was a very movie-filled couple of class days. That was also a good movie, mostly about the East-West German divide.

Here's something I noticed. Germans use the word "bitte" to say both "please" and "you're welcome." However, they use it in a slightly different context than we do in America. For instance, if I am buying something at a bakery, they often say "bitte" before I say "danke" ("danke" means "thank you" in case you were baffled). In America, we pretty much always wait until someone says "thank you" before saying "you're welcome." But they don't really do that here. However, when Germans are speaking English, they often say "please" before you say "thank you." It's the strangest thing until you get used to it. So for instance, if I go into a shop to buy something, and they can tell that I'm an American, they will often use English right from the start. They will give me my change and say "please," followed by me saying "thank you." It's very odd, but also a very interesting language thing that I have noticed. Hmm I don't know maybe that's just interesting to me.

I learned to salsa dance today. They had an optional salsa class for our program. At first, I did not sign up. But of course, they had a shortage of male participants, so my German teacher sort of coaxed the guys in our class to sign up. But it was not that bad actually. It was pretty hilarious at points. But also fairly exhausting. None of us are very good, but we got a start anyway. Tonight I'm going to the bar downstairs with some friends from my program. Tomorrow I'm doing homework, and then Saturday I'm going to Stuttgart for the day with some friends.