ich liebe der 'schland...

This week has been uneventful in a good way. Shlepping myself to classes, buying crap like new makeup and a shower scrubbie thing at the drug store, reading magazines, listening to Podcasts, thinking about my future (ugh.) and of course, trying desperately to get some of this language to sink in. In so many ways I love German... I find it charming that it uses forms like "thee" and "thou" and words equivalent to "hither" and "thither" and also phrases things; "I like it not" or "that goes not" instead of "I don't like it" or "that doesn't go" oh, and also the word "one" to refer to the collective "you." It's all very medieval and somehow romantic. But it also doesn't really make sense in my brain, and most especially when I open my mouth to let words fall out. Generally that doesn't go very well.

So I was pleasantly surprised when I was able to (almost... kind of... sort of) engage in a conversation with the lady at the Ausländerbehörde, or Foreign Office, where I was applying for a visa today. See, living in Germany is totally cool, no problem, do as you like... for three whole months. However, if you want to stay longer, you have to get a visa, which in theory, shouldn't be a problem for someone studying here. In theory. However, the reality is that in order to stay, one must have a whole crap-load of money in the bank, around the tune of €6.380 (six thousand three hundred eighty euros... German uses a dot in numbers where we in English use a comma and vice versa...) Multiply that by the current € to $ exchange rate and... ouch. Obviously, I do not have this kind of dough sitting in the bank, let alone in my German bank account. So, in order to get my student visa and be allowed to stay in the country for the appropriate amount of time, I need to prove my financial independence. 

In order to do this, I can hopefully get Financial Aid at school to fax something over to "vouch" for the fact that this money is really coming to me. But who knows. The only thing I'm sure about in this situation is that my legal stay is ending in less than a month. So that's kind of stressing me out.

Other than that, things are good. My classes are great. I take two "real" university courses at Uni Leipzig. The first is Deutsche Demokratik Republik/Bundesrepublik Deutschland Foto, in which we look at and learn about photography in the GDR (socialist) and BRD (capitalist) mostly in the 60's, 70's and 80's. The other is a module called "Englisch Unterricht," which is teaching English to German kids. The seminar is in English, the lecture is entirely in German, and aside from my friend Melinda, everyone in the module is German.

My other two classes are in the category of German as a Foreign Language, one being Phonetics and the other Grammar. Altogether it's a pretty light load, to be honest. I dropped one course, Deutsch für Geisteswissenschaftler, because I found it tedious and boring and it interfered with my ability to attend observation at the middle school for the Teaching English module.

Now I get to spend my Monday afternoons hanging out with little rascals at Apollonia Mittelschule in Connewitzer Kreuz. I totally love it. I'm obligated not to say anything about any of the kids personally, but as a whole, they are a lovely bunch, and I feel like I'm accomplishing something more meaningful to my degree when I'm actually in a classroom, even though it's not an art classroom. Kids are kids and classroom management is classroom management so there's definitely going to be something to learn.