What is Foreign Exchange to Me?

"A year of of my life. My life in a year."

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Friday, October 5, 2012

It’s Been a While

I’m quite sad now. I finally got around to doing a long, updated post. And then, like every writer does at some point or another, I accidentally deleted it when I meant to save it. Simply awesome. So here we go again (though I have to work tomorrow so this will probably be much shorter!)

I feel like being a college student is an ever going cycle. Because I am in college I have no time IMG_1042to travel, but if I didn’t go to college, I wouldn’t be able to get a job; therefore, while I might have the time, I wouldn't have the money to travel! I know college will help me in the long run, but being stuck back in my home town while sick with the travel bug stinks!

I love the reaction I get whenever I tell people I fluently speak German. They ask me to say something in it and their response is always, “But you’re a sweet, innocent girl! How could something so scary sounding be coming from you!?” Maybe it’s because I’m a linguistics person, but German has never really sounded scary to me… though I will say I do sometimes think Germans decided how to spell words by randomly choosing 31 letters out of a hat. A perfect example would be words like

Höchstgeschwindigkeitsbegrenzung.

Believe it or not, this means ‘maximum speed limit,’ and I actually have used it in a normal conversation (and conveniently enough it has exactly 31 letters).

Random Person: What you speak German!? Say ‘Hello!’

Angie: …Hallo.

Never gets old. Winking smile

So let’s see, what’s new!? I have somehow managed to get straight A’s so far this semester (for all you Germans out there,that means I’ve gotten 13, 14, or 15 on all of my Prüfungen so far), and I’m also the German tutor. I absolutely love doing this because not only do I (apparently) get to help people improve their German grades (I’m quite altruistic at heart), but I get to teach people about strange German words and expressions such as ‘geil.’ While the Germans may be EXTREAMLY efficient in both their language and the way they run their country, they somehow made the mistake of making the word for ‘awesome’ and ‘horny’ be the same thing. After answering a difficult  question correctly, one of my German students said, “Ich bin so geil,” and while he IMG_1047intended to tell me “I am extremely awesome,” he actually informed me that he is, in fact, extremely horny. After correcting him, he thanked me for my ‘kindheartedness,’ rather than me allowing him to walk up to a group of Germans this summer during his internships and inform them of his ‘horny-ness.’

*Explaining a topic in math*

Angie: Ach ja! Das stimmt!

Ali: What does stimmt mean…?

Angie: It’s like… ‘agreed’ in German.

I’m also an active member of the Political Science Club at my college (this would be a great time for me to post photos, but my camera has still not been located Sad smile ), and I would encourage everyone (whether you are American or not) to keep updated on the presidential election happening this November!

Conveniently enough, one of my managers (at my second job) speaks some German. The only downside to this is if I’m ever upset around him, he can usually understand the (inappropriate) things I’m saying under my breath. And I should really get out of the habit of answering the phone in German while at work too…

Despite going to school for 19 hours a week ( a college student is considered to be a “full time student” at 12 hours a week) and working 25-30 hours a week, I still manage to have time for fun with my best friend… even if we are a little strange at times.

Snapshot_20120914_37

Hope you all have a nice week, und Deutschland, ich vermisse dich so unglaublich sehr!

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Days in Germany