Kari kan heel goed duits!

As you perhaps gathered from the subject line (or not), I have started up Dutch class! I went to the first one last night. I have to work myself back into it, but I think once I accomplish that, it'll be a lot of fun. I am in desperate need of a dictionary though, and I think I'm only going to find German-Dutch dictionaries...not exactly what I want, but they'll work. I wouldn't even know where to tell my parents to start looking for the ones I bought back in the Netherlands. Besides, I send them on enough wild goose chases through the jungle of boxes and Rubbermaid totes I've left in their basement. I've leave them alone this time.

One thing I realized last night while sitting in my first Dutch class--I am really really good at German! In fact, that's what my subject line says: Kari speaks German really well. Now, normally, I am quite humble about my German language abilities (just ask my roommate Rosalie--I'm always saying that I'm not that good), but I shouldn't necessarily be. My big question is, how did I get so good at German? I'm having a hard time remembering in detail how I learned German in the first place, which I'd like to do so I can apply the strategies to Dutch. I probably just memorized everything I heard...a tactic which certainly produces results.

The Dutch class consists of eight people. Our teacher apparently isn't a native, although she's soooo good that I (and several other classmates) mistook her for a native speaker! I think she said she's Austrian, but her German didn't seem native to me, which could simply be because I had it in my head that it wasn't.

Today is Fat Tuesday and there is a little party for the Webster staff at 5pm, which I get to take part in even though I didn't wear a costume to work today. My boss is dressed up as Pippy Longstocking, complete with freckles and all. Too bad I don't have my digital camera with me today! We are going to eat traditional Faschingskrapfen, which are essentially donuts filled with either apricot jelly or vanilla pudding. The apricot jelly donuts are available all year round now, but when my boss was a kid 30 years ago, you could only get Krapfen during the carnival season. Some businessman or woman found out s/he could make a lot of money by offering those Krapfen all year around! I personally don't like apricot jelly, and I find that the American version of a creme or pudding filled donut is much better than what's offered here, but I will eat them. When in Rome... :)

Steeples and sunshine

The view from Schloss Belevedere over the city

Saved from the evil Français

Does anyone remember how much I disliked French when I took it at college? I didn't really either, until I signed up for and attended my first French for Beginners with Limited Previous Knowledge (that comes off some much better in German!). I had been thinking of taking a language class and was trying to decide between Dutch and French, both of which I have studied before. After being in southern France last June, where I started to be able to understand individual words in sentences, my interest in French was renewed. I managed to surpress the memories of that wretched French class in the first semester of my sophomore year and convinced myself that not only was French more practical than Dutch, but I could certainly handle it now. So I signed up, shelled out the €160 for class and books, and went to class. As I sat there during that hour and a half, I realized I had made a grave mistake.

J'deteste Français!

What what I thinking???? I still couldn't understand anything the teacher said, although I was impressed by how much I did indeed remember. I left class with a bitter taste in my mouth, which grew increasingly bitter that evening and throughout the next day. In my heart, I knew that I really wanted to take Dutch, but, instead of listening to my gut (which, according to Malcom Gladwell's excellent book "Blink", is almost always right!), I decided to be practical. Foolish!

I read through the school's cancellation policy and it said that once a class has started, no refunds will be issued. I felt like there was a rock in the pit of my stomach. I decided to go to the school anyway and beg them to let me out of it, even if I had to pay some sort of cancellation fee. The desperate look on my face must have been convincing enough, because the administrator I talked to agreed to let me out of it and didn't even charge me the cancellation fee! And they allowed me to return the books as well! It was like my own personal miracle. I left the school and felt sooooo relieved and grateful.

Monday I'm going to sign up for the Dutch class and do what I actually want to do. One of my teachers heard this story on Friday and she asked me what could I possibly do with Dutch. My answer? It makes me happy and I love it--who cares what I can do with it! I'm practical in almost every other aspect of my life--I deserve to be impractical this one time.

Incompetence on the job

How is it that some people get to keep the jobs they have when they don't have a single clue how to do them? This is my question of the day, and it quite often comes up while I am at Webster. I am planning a study abroad fair and, of course, need basic information for it. One of the questions I asked: how can a student currently studying in Vienna spend a term at another campus? No one seems to know the answer! The three people in Vienna that are supposed to know have a vague idea of how to start the process, but not really how to end it, and the people at the other campuses are having trouble providing me with the missing information. Of course, these are the same three people that didn't want to advertise the free plane ticket Webster offers its students in Europe that want to study in Asia or the US because it would create more work for them... *eyebrow raise* Isn't that what they're here for?

A Sailor on the SS Great Britain

Yay Olympics!

I love the Olympics. Last night I was at the gym and asked the guy at the counter to turn from MTV (which you can watch every day) to a channel that was showing the Olympics. I had the BEST workout I've had in a long time! The Olympics are just so motivating because most of the athletes there aren't professionals. It makes me somehow think that maybe I could get there some day if I just worked hard enough. That's a pleasant thought.

Unfortunately I won't actually be going to Torino this coming weekend as reported in an earlier post. I had told the girl who was organizing the trip that if the prices went up, I probably wouldn't be able to afford the trip. So when they finally got around to booking stuff, the price of the hockey ticket had risen from $40 to $80 (but apparently nothing else had gone up) and so the organizer didn't bother to inform me. Makes me think I better watch what I say around her in the future, since it seems she takes what I say quite literally! I was extremely disappointed on Monday when I found out they were indeed going (I just thought they hadn't gotten it together in time to actually go) and looked around to see if I could still get a ticket to the hockey game, but they were over $200, which really is out of my budget. *Sigh* Next time.

The review of my trip to England will be coming shortly...I've been really busy at school (I have to actually prepare lessons--how unfair!) and just haven't had time. I'll put up a picture though to get you interested.

If you just complain long enough

After weeks of [complaining about] not having anything to do at my internship at Webster University, a special task dropped into my lap! Jutta, my boss, was talking with the undergraduate advisor about what to do with me, and they came up with the idea that I could organize a study abroad fair here on campus. So that's what I'm going to work on now. I actually think it is a really good idea and it should look impressive on the resume, being that Webster Vienna has NEVER had one before. I'm introducing all sorts of excellent new things, like the surveys I'm giving to the study abroad students regarding their experience here, and now this. It isn't going to be until April, so I have lots of time to figure it all out. I've got to admit that I have a serious lack of knowledge about how things work at Webster, so this'll be a good little challenge for me. By the time this actually happens, then it'll be almost time for graduation and then I'll be leaving...wow. When you think about life in terms of milestone events instead of days it seems to go faster!