Day 34 - I am reborn a child of the German language

Freitag

8:00-9:00 - taped my music together for my binder

9:00-10:00 - Grab the keyboard from the Alte Mensa to put in the van

10:45-12:50 - Practice Wolf/Bach at Theater

1:00-2:15 - Eating lunch and desserts while studying German outside a Bakery

2:30-4:00 - German class

4:30-5:30 - Rehearse with Sarah

5:30-6:45 - Rehearse with Abby

7:30-9:00 - Jungfrau performance

In my first few weeks here, I found myself naturally engaged in picking up more and more new vocabulary and grammatical concepts. Last week was the first time that it seemed to slow down. This week, I really feel like things are beginning to gel. I've been finding that somehow I magically know the articles (masculine vs. feminine) of many words, and it does not feel like I'm treading precariously in a sea of foreign words. Though still filled with gaps, the grammar is starting to click a lot more for me.

The sensation of picking up this language seems to resemble an experience of rebirth, though not completely. I feel like an infant growing in the German language. Over the course of these weeks, I have progressed from just hearing sounds, to recognizing familiar words, to understanding and identifying words, to using the words myself. I want to think that I have the linguistic command of a 4 or 5 years old now. Maybe. It's funny because I often feel like a 4 or 5 year old when I stare blankly at people when I don't understand what they say to me.

Also, as a result of my better grasping German, I've been finding that my command of French has suffered significantly. Apparently German is fighting for the space that French is occupying in my brain. Today I nearly said, "Ich parle ein bisschen" to someone, intending to say I speak a little bit of French. (in French, je parle un peu, and in German, ich spreche ein bisschen).

I wonder what's going to happen with the language part of my brain when I come back to the U.S. I bet I will get bored seeing and hearing English all the time.