So today I came early to class—I took a seat at 7.55—and was rattling away at my computer (heh, heh) when the kid from Argentina, Alfredo, came in. “Glaubst du die classe ist…” and he hesitated, unsure of his words and his grammar. He essentially managed to ask if the class was meeting in the classroom or the Mediothek (or, computer lab/library) today. His accent was terrible, and I could barely understand him, not that he likely understood my reply, “Ja, um fünfzehn minuten.” Then I remembered something about going to the lab and said, “Well, ich glaube…” and he turned and went to investigate. I kept typing away and then the teacher herself came in.

“Oh, Erin! Erin!” Then she said in rapid German that my composition that I wrote in class yesterday was so good, it was nearly perfect, and that she thinks because of that I should move into the A22 class, rather than A21. I froze. I panicked. “NO!” I wanted to yell, This class is perfect and I can understand just enough and it’s not too overwhelming but last night’s Hausaufgabe nearly made me tear my hair out because I had no idea what we were doing! But I merely said, “Um. Ich kann nicht so gut Deutsch sprechen.” She then reverted to English, and I explained that writing and grammar are things I know best, and what I really try to do my best, so just because I wrote well didn’t mean that I belonged anywhere higher. She said to think about it and if I wanted to change later, it wouldn’t be a problem.

What we wrote had been very, very simple — a story in pictures we had to write an accompanying story for, about a family sitting down for dinner and realizing the daughter wasn’t there, the father going off to discover she was reading, and then sure enough, the daughter comes to dinner and now the father is reading! Haha. I knew most of the appropriate verbs and I puzzled out the possessive pronouns I needed (apparently that had been a clue I was good with grammar, because my pronouns’ gender matched the appropriate nouns!) and then wrote a very simple story, with American-style dialogue. (Germans use funky punctuation, which I don’t think makes sense!) But apparently, ich kann gut Deutsch schreiben. (Literally, I can good German writing. Hehe.)

So it’s now 10.10, and we’ve been doing grammar, some of which I’ve learned, but much of which I haven’t. The idea of actually learning both the accusative and dative cases at once and knowing how to distinguish has helped me immensely in the last day or two with my understanding of grammar. Especially when I can understand the English equivalents of what she says in German. For instance, she basically explained that if you have a Subject-Verb-Direct Object sentence, you can cram all sorts of adjectives and adverbial phrases in it but you have to remember that the object takes the accusative case. (I had to puzzle that out!) But it makes complete sense to me, now! I only wish I could explain it to the few English speakers who looked lost. This I can understand! Remembering enough verbs to be able to speak, though…

Now, off to get a sandwich! More later!