"How's your German"?

When talking to friends and family from Norway there are always some questions that gets asked over and over again. How are you? How's uni? How do you like it in Germany? I'm fine, uni is awesome, and I love Germany. Then there's a last question. How's your German?. Not fine, not awesome, and certainly not lovable. So this question is harder to answer. Of course they are curious, how fast does it get better? Does it even get better at all?

Of course when living in Germany, you are forced to speak German in many situations, at the store, at the bakery, when buying food, etc, etc. I've learnt that with some simple phrases you come far. "Ist hier noch frei?", "Stimmt so", "Danke, Ihnen auch", or for the slightly more pushy Germans, and with these I mean the ones wandering around at the main-station inventing one crappy lie after another, to get a Euro or 100 from you. ("Ich brauche Geld, sodass ich meinen Frosch im Krankenhaus besuchen kann"). Be rough, people, be rough. "Von mir kriegst du nichts, verschwinde!".

Unfortunately (and yes, this is unfortunate) I have many opportunities to escape from German, after all I'm studying English, all the fellow-students are fully capable of understanding if I ask them questions in English. It would be better if I would use a huge sign in the forehead saying "Reden Sie auf keinen Fall Englisch mit mir!", so that I would be 100% forced to talk German, always. I guess this is a question of self-discipline, really.

I suppose I should try to answer the question though. My German is getting better, and it would get better whether I wanted it or not. It is impossible not to pick up words and phrases when you have German around you 24/7, and that is good. It's one of the main reasons why I'm here anyway. So I'm looking forward to see my own German bloom, I'm hoping that I'll speak German fluently by the time I'll have my bachelor. We'll see that in three years, won't we?

Guten Abend ^__^

I did not lie

I tried to convince you last time that I'm still alive, and when posting soo rarely, I bet all my blog-posts will have to do that. Last time was 1,5 months ago, and in this big period of time, I might just has well been run over by a tractor, or eaten by a horde of bloodthirsty birds, you'll never know. But apart from perhaps feeeling half-dead cause of the amount of things to do at the university, I'm alive and kickin' like a frog on speed.

So, a lot of important, life-changing things happened since last time I said hello. I cut my nails at least 5 times, I bought a pair of new jeans, I cut off half my fingertip while making dinner. As you can see all these things are clearly very important matters that I will indeed think about when lying on my deathbed. Ok, back to reality. I live in Germany now. Yep, in the country of Bier and Lederhosen, (no, I'm not living in Bavaria, but they are funnier to make fun of anyway.). I live in gorgeous Leipzig, and loving it! The city is gorgeous, the university is gorgeous, and our apartment is gorgeous! Pictures will come (when I have time, a small Christmas-present perhaps?).

Maybe you forgive me for not writing often when you see all I've done? :) Moving, buying furniture, building the furniture that we've bought, fixing all kinds of official papers, fixing cable-tv (and this is for Kabel Deutschland: #%@(%& ))#&(!)! !!!!!), internet, electricity, and of course I had a lot of lost cuddling to do (and with this I won't be done before I have my bachelor..). So, just to convince you once more, I am alive, and I'll try to post more often here.

So, see you around, and hopefully before Christmas : D

Yes, she´s alive.

Truth, though I understand that you can't quite believe it. I was kinda busy lately dealing with angry customers at work, and stressing. Alot. See, the last months was the months where I was constantly nervous about the future. Would Uni Leipzig accept me? And what on earth would I do if not?

But, ladies and gentlemen, I hereby announce that I am in Germany, searching for an apartment. So yes, they accepted me. (and I don't think I'll ever realize it). So now I can start worrying about what the hell I got myself into? Studies in German? My, my, my..... But, let's all suppose I will actually survive this, and that all the cosy Germans wont think that I'm something that is quite close to braindead.

Wish me luck! :-)

It's official - I rock

In German, this is. You know the exams I took 6 weeks ago? German? Well, ladies and gentlemen, I got the result. And I am officially good in German, I can officially read, hear, write and talk German at a level that is needed to study in Germany. It's a number, on a paper, a number that tells whoever looks at this (and really, who does except from me, maybe parents, some friends I force it upon, and the Universities I apply to?) that I, yours truly, rock. Of course I wanted to blog about this the second I got to know it, but.. uhm.. I was busy, you know, partying all night, and soaking my brains out. (in a world where "party" means "sleep", and "soaking my brains out" means something like.. snoring. Yes, I know, I'm so graceful).

When someone now asks me if I "speak German" I can, with my hand on my heart, say yes. If this lil' bastard would doubt me I always have the diploma to shove in his/her/its face. Oh, the never-ending joy!

I rock this much:

LESEVERSTEHEN TDN 4 Kann geschriebene Texte aus dem studienbezogenen Alltag sowie Texte zu fächerübergreifenden wissenschaftlichen Themen, deren Struktur sich an der Allgemeinsprache orientiert, in ihrem Gesamtzusammenhang und in ihren Einzelheiten verstehen.

Oh yes!

HÖRVERSTEHEN TDN 4 Kann gesprochene Texte aus dem studienbezogenen Alltag sowie Texte zu fächerübergreifenden wissenschaftlichen Themen, deren Struktur sich an der Allgemeinsprache orientiert, in ihren wesentlichen Aussagen verstehen.

Uh-uhm!

SCHRIFTLICHER AUSDRUCK TDN 4 Kann sich in studienbezogenen Alltagssituationen (u. a. Bericht für Stipendiengeber) sowie im fächerübergreifenden wissenschaftlichen Kontext (u. a. Protokolle, Thesenpapiere) weitgehend zusammenhängend und strukturiert sowie weitgehend angemessen äußern; sprachliche Mängel beeinträchtigen das Textverständnis nicht.

Thaaat's right!

MÜNDLICHER AUSDRUCK TDN 4 Kann sich in studienbezogenen Alltagssituationen (u. a. Immatrikulation, Anmeldung zur Lehrveranstaltung) sowie im fächerübergreifenden wissenschaftlichen Kontext (u. a. gesellschaftspolitische Diskussionen) weitgehend situationsangemessen mündlich äußern, sprachliche Mängel beeinträchtigen die Kommunikation nicht.

Now, honestly,  I bet you left the page before coming here, cause I'm so full of myself that the half would be plenty, but.. Let's say I am allowed to.. once.. a year? Deal? (twice a year if Universität Leipzig accepts me.)

Sounds like a plan? Hell, it's a plan. Have a great evening, everyone!

Not that big on shopping

But sometimes a girl just gets drawn to a special piece of clothing, you know what I mean, nay?

Well, as you probably understood, this now happened to me. And I figured I'd share it with the rest of the world, somehow I'm not big on sharing, but this... it's too beautiful to keep to myself. Take a firm grip on your desk/chair/tree/whatever you find good, and look at this.

Ladies and transvestites, I give you...

Hood Thong!

How many times did you put on a thong and think "damn, why doesn't this thing have a hood on". Exactly, right? You can't even count. It's like God is a marvellous designer that sent us this gift from heaven. Thank you God.

Heartattack

This weekend was the two-year anniversary with my boyfriend, it was yesterday, and it was the greatest day ever. This, cause my boyfriend flew in from Germany to meet me this weekend. However, it wasn't only red roses and [insert clichès]. I might have been put into more stress than I can handle in one weekend. It started on Friday, listen to this.

I wake up, shower, and go down to the living-room to watch some news before getting off to work. The first thing I hear, is that it will be strike in airports, some will close. Note that Friday was the day my love was flying in. So, as you can imagine, I get kinda stressed out. My love comes visit for our two-year anniversary weekend, and strike in the world of the planes. Woho! Day can't start better, or? Work goes rather slow, and I would lie if I said that I didn't think of it every second of the day. But, good news! As I come back and watch the news, it turns out that the airport he is flying to won't feel anything from this strike, so he's coming after all, ne?

Some hours later my boyfriend is going to the train-station in Germany, to get his cute ass to Berlin and the airport. I wait for an SMS confirming that he got on the train, and everything is good. My phone beeps, and I take up the phone already smiling, cause I knew he'd be getting closer every second. But no. The train was 80 minutes late. Eighty minutes! This would result in him probably not reaching the flight, and after crying my eyes out sending smses, receiving smses, I kinda gave up... It was too good to be true after all.

An SMS ticks in, and the crows in my tummy really hurt. But it's good news. Deutsche Bahn sets up a taxi to the airport (almost 200 km), and the chance that he'll reach it is a lot bigger than 10 seconds ago. So hope comes back, and I sit darned nervous for hours, until it finally ticks in that he reached it. Needless to say, it was never better getting to see him again.

Today, about 1 hour ago, he had to get to the airport nearby, so he could get back to Germany again. My aunt drives us to the airport, and before we come on the motorway, we see that the traffic is going awfully slow. In the roundabout before entering the motorway we observe that no traffic is moving. It's still, completely still. It was no way at all that we would get anywhere. So my aunt took another way, hoping it would matter. We were already running late, and the fact that the road was kinda not functioning didn't make it better. So we had to take a detour, my aunt even called "experts" to hear where we could drive to actually reach it. At a certain point we do arrive at the airport (not exactly early, I should add). I rushed my boyfriend to the security-check and really hoped everything would be fine. Some minutes later he sends me a text-message saying that he just reached it, they were about to close the gate.

I think both of us experienced more stress this weekend, than ever. Of course I don't care now that I was closer to heartattacks than ever before, since I had one of the best weekends in my life. It was worth all the worries, and all the stress. Maybe my heart begs to differ, luckily it can't type. Thank you to my boyfriend for being the veryvery best, and thank you to whatever is sitting in heaven and pointing with fingers, for giving us luck in the bad luck.

Now I really need to relax my head. Tudelu!

On my pink cloud

Not metal, but black clouds are full of rain, and rain is shit. So I guess it will remain pink.

I did it, peeps! I fulfilled the TestDaF, I did it! And I did it with style... my own twisted one anyway. I cannot explain how good it feels now, and even though I thought I did really poopy on the oral part, I got a small comment that changed my mind.

The exam-guard, or whatever they are, started chit-chatting when I was done with the exam, and she really flattered me in so many ways. So she talked a lil about the test, that they look more if I understand things, and manage to ask questions, and form sentences, rather than picking out small mistakes, then she said out of nowhere, that "you grew up with German, right". I asked whooot, she said "your mother or father is German?". I was like nooo, and then she looked impressed, telling me that I did very good then. HELLO WORLD! A German woman thought I grew up with German around me all the time. How big is that compliment? Exactly, huge. So, see you around as soon as I landed from this cloud of mine, I'm afraid it's not that good internet connection up here!

Tudelu then!