Look! A Journal! What a surprise! Lets see, what’…

Look! A Journal! What a surprise!

Lets see, what’s been going on?

February was an exhausting month for me. I worked a lot of extra hours and was glad to see the month end. Don’t get me wrong, I still love teaching, but worked a lot more than I was used to. That’s okay, it’s money in the bank for my vacations. I bought a scanner from Media Markt for only €59.

Onto March….First of all, a friend of mine from my German class is back in Germany. Niko returned to Thailand in November because his visa was about to expire, and he had loose ends to tie up before moving to Germanys for several years. We kept in touch by email and Yahoo Messenger for the time he was gone, and he returned yesterday. We didn’t have a lot of time to talk today, but will in the future since we’ll both be here for the next few years. It was good to see him again and I’m glad he’s back. He’s one of those (rare) people who lights up a room by just entering it.

Unfortunately, since he’s missed so much of our German class, he’s had to go to a lower level. When he was back in Thailand, we communicated using English, since he had forgotten so much of his German. Before he left, I didn’t even know he spoke English, because we had always spoken German. We spoke English today also, but hopefully we’ll be back to speaking German has he remembers more of it.

Today, I learnt that in Turkey, regular school students are required to study English for 6 years and must pass an end of high school exam in English, along with their other subjects.

My German class is the best thing about my life in Germany. It’s not because of the German languages, but because of the people I’ve met. There are a lot of interesting people in the world, and I am learning a lot. There was a Muslim holiday in February, and I spoke to Ugur about it (in German) before class. He said it was a time of prayer to Allah, and on Tuesday, Muslims made an offer to an animal to Allah (I didn’t feel the need to get into the specifics of exactly how he did his offer). We also talked about the Hajj and he told me a few other things about Muslim culture.

11 March – My belt broke at work today. I used the bathroom, then when I went to rebuckle it, the part with the buckle came off in my hand. I don’t really know how old it was, because it was a hand–me–down from a relative in December 1998. I’ll have to buy a new one on Thursday.

13 March – I bought a new belt at Real today. it was 7.99 Euros and is black. Hopefully it’ll last me several years.

15 March – It’s been a good day. I got to the laundry mat at 9h30 and threw in my clothes. I drove to the supermarket from hell (LIDL) and bought a few things. I then drove back to the laundry mat and put my clothes in the dryer. I then drove home and put my groceries in the fridge. At 11h, I went back to the laundry mat, folded my dry clothes, put them in my laundry bag and then hit the open road. Well, not really the open road, but it sounds good. I have the dark blue car this weekend and decided to take advantage of the mostly sunny sky. I drove along the Rhine to Bacharach, 48 km south of Koblenz. I had heard a lot about the town and had wanted to see it for quite a while. Today was my day.

30 March – I was up until 5h this morning. I had planned in going to bed around 1h, but logged on to my favourite website and some of my friends were there. They invited me to Instant Messenger with them, and we finished at 5h. It was actually 4h, but we set the clock ahead. I hadn’t been up that late in a long time.

31 March – Today was the last day of my German class, kind of. We’ve completed the second level, so starting tomorrow, we’ll have a new level and a new teacher. Or, I should say they’d have those things. I’m going to repeat the second level. Why? Because I miss a lot of classes due to work, so I’ve missed a lot of grammar, and my vocabulary is behind the rest of the class. We’ll also lose Sophie, because she’s pregnant and is back to Sweden to have a baby (it’s due in late April/early May. Some of the people I’ve been in class with from the beginning (Anne, Candy, Anna, one we picked up in October (Phanupong) and the others we joined in January (Jurga, Tatijana, Serra). The first six months we were Bonn group (all classes have names in our school) and we merged with the Mainz group in January and took their name. It really was a fun group to be with. I’ll miss them, and I with them all the best for the future.

Last week I had spoken to Claudia, the head of the German department, and she had told me that I could join Georg or Ursula’s class. I spoke to Georg on Friday and his class was on lesson 9 in the second level, but I wanted to start it over again, so I decided to join Ursula’s, since it was starting from the beginning. I went down and spoke to her today, and she agreed to let me join her class. She seemed a bit reluctant at first, but then agreed. I don’t think she likes me, but that’s life.

The weather was quite nice in March. It was very sunny, albeit cold. I hope the trend continues in April.