First week of classes

It's the things that you don't think of that are often the most challenging. I finally got my hair cut - turns out the Germans don't use a grade system but rather ask for it in millimetres. I decided to take a punt and ask for a 6 millimetre shave back and sides and to my relief it turned out fine. Being unable to find the equivalent of a barbers (maybe they don't exist in Germany) I had to settle for a hairdressers and for the first time in my life had my hair washed by a hairdresser. Kind of feels like a massage actually which was nice.

I went to an International Food Party in my halls which was fantastic. Food from all over the world; I teamed up with a couple of English folk and all we could think to make were scones or Victoria sponge, which if you think about it are kind of the same thing (flour, butter, sugar, cream, jam...). Finding self-raising flour in Lidl proved problematic and even Vida's excellent idea of looking up a German recipe for scones proved unsuccessful, with the recipe only stating its requirement of 'Mehl' (flour), which was rather unhelpful. We gambled and just picked a type; it worked out fine. The scones went down a treat (phew) and we enjoyed lots of other interesting things from China, Italy, Canada, Turkey, Australia...

I started my classes this week, which was a mixed bag, shall we say. My first was beginner's Spanish, which is taught in German by a Spaniard with a thick Spanish accent. No problem for the Germans, but I found it really hard to understand him, so much so that I preferred it when he spoke Spanish because at least then we were all in the same boat. Spanish seems fun though, I'm looking forward to practising with my friends in Southampton who study it already :)

Wednesday I had my French grammar and translation class. I put that in the past tense because that will be the only time I attend this one. Stupidly I'd not realised that the translation would be German to French. My heart sunk when I looked through the German sentences we were going to translate together in the class. It sunk again when I found out I was the only non-native German or French speaker in the room. The most frustrating thing was that the level of French was fine, but it was understanding the written German that was the source of my downfall. How can you begin to translate a sentence into French if you don't understand what you're translating? Luckily I'd picked more modules than I needed so I bade this class Adieu.

Thursday was better, thankfully. This is my busiest day with three two hour classes. The first was French speaking/comprehension which I was worried about after Wednesday's debacle. The class takes place in a language lab and we put on these big headphones and are then paired randomly with someone in the class to chat with. This seems a bit strange and unnecessary to me, surely you could just chat to the person next to you or move round the room? It became even more unnecessary when I was paired with the girl sat next to me, but we continued to use our headphones to communicate with each other from two feet away. The whole class went well, though, and despite the fact that the majority of the class was German this didn't pose much of a problem as the lesson was held in French. Also, if you're wondering, yes the Germans are amazing at French as well as English. When a German learns a language, he or she masters it.

The next two classes (both German) also went well: the first was a placement exam to make sure we were put in the correct groups. Then I had my class called 'Gesellschaft, Geschichte und Kultur' (Society, History and Culture) which I was looking forward to because it's my only module that is nothing to do with language. The title is very broad and it looks as though we are going to be covering a very broad syllabus, including National Socialism, the DDR, immigration, terrorism, religion and politics.