By lumping the two weeks together I may actually have something interesting to write about. Things happen a whole lot slower when you’re settled, but I’ve been keeping myself busy. The language classes are going well. There were a few days there that I nearly strangled someone out of sheer boredom, but now we’re back to things I still find a little challenging, so that’s nice. I’m getting a bit more practice writing letters and sentences using various conjugations of irregular verbs and all that sort of fun stuff. I can’t imagine having to learn this all from scratch – I’m really lucky to have a basis to build from.
Both the last weekends I’ve headed out of town. The first weekend to visit Kathi’s family just outside Munich, and the second I went to vote in Frankfurt and then headed down to visit the family for a few days. Both times it was really nice to get out of the city a bit and smell a bit of fresh air. It’s nice that only an hour out of the centre of Munich is greenery and villages. We stayed with Kathi’s mother, sister, brother-in-law and nephew; it was really nice to hang out and meet them all. On our second night there we went to a party that someone in the village had organised, which was a lot of fun despite the intermittent rainstorms. There were a variety of bands, plenty of food and a fire for BBQing – we had marshmallows! Between the rainstorms and before it got dark, Kathi and I went for a wander through the fields and got a really nice view down on the surrounding countryside. I also played Scrabble in German for the first time (challenging)and ate some really tasty home-made pesto (garlicky).
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I feel pretty well established in Munich now, my larder is growing, I’ve befriended the flatmates, laid my hands on a bike and broken a household appliance (then had it fixed). I also started my language classes on Monday and am starting to enjoy them. They’re a little slow, but then so is my brain when it comes to grasping the intricacies of German grammar. For example, the inflection of adjectives in three different cases (nominative, dativ or accusative), depending on which of the four genders the subject is (male, female, neuter, plural). Like I said, I’m having issues. The whole “just go with what sounds right” plan isn’t working so well and it seems this may actually be something I have to work at.
Meanwhile I’ve been “furthering my studies” by hanging out with friends who happen to speak German and reading a little, though I seem to keep falling asleep when I read which makes progress difficult. It still takes quite a bit of concentration to read German but (while I stay awake) at least I tend to know what’s going on even if I don’t understand every single word. With swimming a few times a week and continued good eating my progression to a routine is pretty much complete. In other slightly more exciting news Erica has booked her flight to Montana and Brett is in the process of doing the same for once he finishes work. That’s it for this week…