Alex is abroad in Munich, Germany, until August 2009.

Classes have officially begun and the language barrier is finally catching up with me.  I have spent the last three days navigating new regions of public transportation, trying to at least find my way to the university building (let alone my classes), deciphering complicated syllabi, writing vocabulary words to look up later in the margins of my notebook and taking as many naps between classes as humanly possible.  I won’t give you a detailed outline of my day–to-day class life; this week is the anomaly, during which I try out as many classes as possible, but a few experiences were more foreign (haha) than the others.

So I have gotten a little over ambitious with the European languages and decided to take French, with no previous knowledge besides “au revoir.”  On Monday morning I was still enthusiastic, ready to take on the world of German universities and confidently walked into my French class.  Like the language classes at NU, there were only about 20 people in the class and the professor gestured more than she talked.  I tackled the first few phrases that we learned easily, but as soon as we got to verb conjugation, I hit a brick wall.  Normally when I want to write down a word phonetically, so that I will know how to pronounce it later, I can do so in English.  Yet I am so conditioned now to pronounce words the German way, that I was immediately confused about how to take notes.  Combine that with not knowing some of the German definitions of French vocabulary and things got scary quickly.  Luckily enough, the French professor assured us that we were moving faster than normal that day and that she would repeat everything many times.  By the end of the 90 minute class, my brain was saturated with a few key French phrases and a whole heap of German words that I needed to look up.  Despite it being more difficult than I anticipated, I am still looking forward to going back next week, because learning a foreign language, in a foreign language, is a very cool, albeit challenging experience.

One thing that I love about Europe is that if someone does not speak your native language, there is usually some language that you can find in common (assuming that you are at least semi-bilingual).  Unfortunately, I had a rude awakening in my Introduction to Political Philosophy class, which was held in an over-crowded classroom and taught by an extremely tall soft-spoken professor.  When we reached the point of discussing the texts for the class, the question was posed whether or not we should read them in the original language. Timeout. Let me run through the authors here: Rousseau, Socrates, Plato, Hobbes, and Rawls.  That would mean French, Greek, and English, not to mention that the course is taught in German.  Most of the students in the room seemed to think this was a legitimate possibility while I had an internal panic attack at the mere suggestion.   Luckily enough the professor said that would not be necessary since the tests would be in German, which just happened to be another road block.  I approached the professor at the end of class and explained to him that I was a foreign student, more than willing to take the essay tests, but cautioned him that they would most likely not be grammatically perfect.  He asked me where I was from, and when I told him America, he said quite simply, “Write the test in English.”  Of course, he also speaks one thousand languages, English being one of them.  While that was a huge relief, I still feel like an eighth-grader in a room full of graduate students in that class.

So far I have depicted all of my classes to be intensely overwhelming and scary.  Mainly that is just the feeling that I get every time I walk into a class and get the syllabus, but the thing that makes them a lot more manageable, and what has kept me from throwing in the towel, is that all of the other students are outrageously friendly!  This is a change from the normal behavior of Germans, because the students are outwardly friendly, not just when you approach them.  In all of my classes I have been approached and chatted with at least one new person, who inevitably wants to know all about where I am from and what I am studying. German classrooms have an even friendlier atmosphere than they do in the states, which I did not expect.

Even though the thought of the many 20 minute presentation I have to make in German is looming over my head right now, I am sure that this week will be the hardest of them all.  I am quite thankful for all of the other German students who commiserate with me and calm me down better than anything else.  Plus, I have my class-free Fridays to look forward to.  Two more days and I am weekend bound.

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