Thirteenth Day in Dortmund

Sept. 13th, 2012

I got to sleep in today! Until 8:30!! I went to class and we covered a lot today. We learned about Trennbare Verben, which are verbs you split up and put the first half of the word at the end of the sentence. For example, “einkaufen” means “to buy.” You chop off the ein part and put it at the end of the sentence like this: “Wir kaufen Bröt ein.” (We buy bread). It’s kind of complicated, but I didn’t invent the German language, so I guess I’ll have to get over it. We also learned how to incorporate the word “like” (gern) into a sentence and practiced more infinitives. We did about 8 worksheets, and by the 7^th one, my brain had shut down. I just sat there and tried to conjugate the verbs I knew.

How do I German??

Needless to say, I was very happy when lunch rolled around. Bilge and I had both packed sandwiches so we ate in the café. I had packed a PB&J. That’s right, you read correctly, peanut butter!!! I was complaining to the group about not being able to find any and Mike volunteered that his mom had packed him some, but he didn’t like it, and I could have it. When he gave it to me, I fell upon the ground and cried tears of joy. (ok, maybe not that drastic, but I was super-happy). Canada is my new favorite country. To all the haters saying Canada produced Justin Bieber, I would also like to submit that it also produced both Ryan Gosling and Ryan Reynolds, so that’s all the convincing I need.  

It's even got cute little bears on it!!!

For your consideration

 I told Mike I would buy him a jar of Nutella for trade, as we should keep U.S.-Canadian relations on relatively good terms.

After that we all meet up for another excursion. This time, it was a S.S. prison from World War II, “Steinwache.” It reminded me a lot of the Stasi prison we visited in Berlin on our class trip in May. The cells were very cramped and cold. All of the exhibits were in German, but our tour guide pointed out a Resistance poster that made me laugh. Basically, it said “How is one supposed to be the ideal German?”

‘Blond, like Hitler

Tall, like Goebbels

Skinny, like Goring”

It made a good point that the men that claimed to be making a superior race, did not even fit into the categories prescribed. However, the man that distributed those posters was arrested and sent to a concentration camp. It made me appreciate the freedom of speech we have today.

After we got back, Damla cooked dinner for me! It was so nice: a corn salad, rice, and some Turkish meatballs. It was delicious. I told her I’d return the favor once I have more ingredients than just bread, meat, and cheese. I asked what kind of American foods she liked, and she said she’d never had a taco or quesadilla. It was settled. Chicken quesadillas are on the menu for sometime this month. Now I just have to figure out how to debone and cook a chicken… I will NOT be using Simplerecipes.com.

German Word of the Day: Freude- "joy" . Upon receiving peanut butter, I jumped for Freude.