Ich Spreche Deutsch.

Well, no, I don't really speak German. But I'm learning how to, any way. So I wanted to give you some updates on how that's going!

Where I am right now, I can introduce myself, describe clothing [poorly], describe the weather, talk about my family and other countries. Not bad for, what, nine classes?

Well, a large part of our grade is participation, obviously, so we have to do a German Lab. I know, wtf. So I went to that at 3:30 yesterday, Tuesday, and it was... interesting. A very young man introduced himself as Clemens; he explained that, in Germany, he teaches English lit - his English is fantastic, btw - but he has never taught his native language [so bear with him, etc.]. For the first half hour, we practised introducing ourselves and each other [and we changed gender quite a few times]. For the second half, we played a really fail geography game, about which I will not go into too much detail. Just let it be known that I finally won the game [Schweiz!]. When we came back, Ariana, Dan, and I [so awkward to write, since it's not Arianna and Danylo] performed dialogues from the textbook for an hour before going to dinner. Bo even came to read one about bananas and oranges. It's funny. He told Tanaha that "It's like really old English!"

So, the language lab folks gave all of us German 101ers iPod touches. They're fully loaded, not only with the tracks from the CDs that came with our textbooks, but also with tons of German music, including Rammstein, and lots of videos. The videos are what really excite me, because they've got a whole bunch of commercials that we can vaguely understand, and there's even SESAME STREET!