End of First Month

Today marked the end of my first German class, on which I'm proud to say I did better than expected. Our exam, which included listening, reading comprehension, writing and speaking sections, was yesterday. The exam started with the two most difficult sections: reading and listening. After these sections, my head was spinning and I was wondering to myself whether or not I'd have to repeat this class next month instead of moving on. The second and third sections proved to be more my style - the speaking and writing parts. Because I could express myself I believe I did better here. For the writing section, we wrote a letter in return to a "friend" who had written to us, at least a page. We had to incorporate certain themes into our response; using these themes as a guide I let my imagination wonder. For the speaking part, we had a 20 minute interaction with a partner about getting to know each other, planning a party, and explaining a graph. We were then graded on our word usage and grammar. I think that German grammar is much easier than English, or maybe we're just slow learners - I remember learning English grammar over a period of about 20 years back in school, where I've only been learning German for a year now. I suppose that's the pace Americans choose to educate their children. Actually, every day I'm realizing how much better life is over here. America is very much one-dimensional and boring, whereas life here is exciting. People travel, know what's going on in the world, and are generally well-rounded and intelligent, albeit opinionated.

A strange thing happened to me yesterday as I took my daily stroll past the playground of the kindergarten that's near our school. For some reason I stopped to watch the kids play, and to my horror a little girl about 5 years old started taking off her clothes! Underwear and all. I figured a teacher would run over and tell her to put it back on (clearly what would happen in America.) Boy, was I mistaken. A second later her little friend came over, sat down, and proceeded to take her clothes off as well! The little girls then ran through the schoolyard bearing it all. One by one the little boys and girls took off all their clothes, and were running through the yard. There must have been thirty of them, all naked and running with joy. The teachers sat around like this was nothing out of the ordinary. I later learned from my German teacher that this is quite normal here during summertime. All the while I was thinking to myself - if this happened back home there would be lawsuits flying left and right. We Americans are frivolous; jumping at the first opportunity to defend our "rights" as humans and to exploit our legal system for an extra buck. What we don't realize, though, is that we are all living in a system of terror, where people are afraid to do anything because they may be slapped with a lawsuit. Furthermore, if kids learn this sort of comfort early on to be naked around one another, maybe it's not such a big deal later on. It's the same with a lower drinking age, and really I could go on and on. The point is, people say, "America is the land of freedom." Maybe I'd think twice before saying that again.