Jetzt denke ich auf Deutsch

(Now I think in German)

On Monday our 9 week Sprachkurs (Language course) began with a placement test and a campus tour. The 12 people involved got split into two groups, theoretically based off of the level of proficiency we displayed on the placement test. Apparently, I managed to do pretty poorly and got stuck in the lower of two sections, much to my shame. I'm pretty sure some of the people in the other section haven't been taking German as long as I have, so I felt pretty crappy about that. The fact that 4 our of 5 people in our group are from Wheaton might also say something (The only person from Wheaton that isn't in our section, Tyler, has already visited here and has a German boyfriend, so he has a bit of an advantage).

Our tour of the campus merely confirmed what I had already heard about the University of Regensburg - it's really ugly. It was best described to me that the people who designed the campus started with a giant block of concrete and cut away everything that didn't look like a University. Everything is made out of the same unpainted concrete in boring orthogonal shapes. It's also really big - they have about 25,000 students compared to Wheaton's 1,500.

Yesterday, we started our actual classes, which will run every weekday from 9-2:30 or so for the next 9 weeks. As one of my classmates said, it's a bit like high school again, though I'm glad there's a lot less angst (so far). I'm enjoying pretty much all of the classes except the writing one - I'm not a big fan of the instructor and I kind of hate writing in German to begin with. Other than that, I will be taking a class on German culture/geography/government, speaking (giving presentations, etc.), pronunciation, grammar, translation, and one on working from texts (books, films, songs, etc.). Needless to say, I'm going to be busy.

The good thing is that I'm finally getting to the point where I'm thinking in German for most of the day. The transition back to English after class or when I'm writing here is starting to feel weird as my brain tries to shift gears. Perhaps there is hope for me yet.