Day 20

Today is the first day we are getting kicked out of the study center 5 hours early for not speaking only in German. It is a pretty big deal for a lot of people who don't have internet in their rooms, because then they really can't talk to anyone from home, because it will only be 11am at 5pm here. Thankfully, I have internet in my room. We finished our homework really early today and now we are trying to figure out something to do. Maybe we can go to a movie. That would be fun. I still want to see Inglorious Bastards in german.

Let's see, I really haven't done anything exciting the last few days. I recovered from the weekend on Sunday and did homework for the entire day. Yesterday, I had a terrible day in class, because I completely forgot what we were working on before the weekend and Herr Doerr knew that and made me do an entire exercise out loud in front of the entire class. It was not fun, but he really wants us to learn, and his method is humiliation.

The last few days have also been a reality check. I am not going to pass the entrance exam and I don't think I care. I can still take classes in german and will learn a lot and they will count toward my minor, so I don't understand why I should put myself through a much harder course for no reason. But this preparation class is extremely difficult, because we are learning the language laws that you don't have to know in order to speak the language, and we are learning how to read highly theoretical and scholarly material and to write that way as well. But I realized that for me it is more important to be able to communicate, so I want to take classes that test my speaking ability.

It's hard to be here right now, because a lot of people are really upset the study center is closing, so no one is speaking in english or in german. It's really weird. Usually people are really happy and there is a lot of chatter, both english and german, but right now it is silent. I am waiting for Liv to finish her homework so we can leave.