Sprachkurs ist fertig!

I completed my language and culture course requirements today!

3 page long essay on German extremism - done
language test - done
language proficiency - still working on it
poster for Austria conference - done
packing for conference - done
sleeping - um...can I sleep in the car?

It feels weird to say that I've finished the first hurdle of my time in Germany. I now only have 90% of my time in Germany remaining. Wow, time flies fast. I know that I've learned a lot of German, but I still lack fluency. I can carry on simple conversations, but once the conversation moves to more complicated terms (read, anything that is not my family, weather, or where I'm from), then I become quickly confused. If the conversation contains a preposition or past participle, then my mind starts to explode.

But in reality, I've learned that German is not all that different than English. Sure, German uses specific words to indicate direct and indirect objects while English relies on word order, but the fact remains that the Germans still think in terms of direct and indirect objects. The idea behind the language is still the same. I just need to learn which preposition goes with what idea. i.e. uber dem Tisch versus auf dem Tisch...one indicates that the item is flying over the table and the other indicates the item is on the table. (Imagine the expression on a German's face when you say that the flowers flew over the the table.)

Learning German has also forced me to think about how I use my own language. I become frustrated with Germans because their verbs don't conjugate in a logical manner. But then I remember the verb....being.

I am
he, she, it is
he was
I was
they were
they are.....

There is not a trend, I just became accustomed to English phrasing so I never thought about strange conjugation. I have no reason to yell at Germans for creating a difficult language. English can be just as illogical, if not more so than German! I hope that as I hear German spoken around me, that I will eventually pick up on the correct forms of verbs, the correct prepositions, and the correct sentence structure (verb at the end!).

Perhaps in a few months time, English will seem just as odd and German will feel more natural.

P.S. - I visited McDonalds today. Sometimes I'm glad that a little piece of the US can be found in nearly every country you visit.