What am I actually supposed to be doing over here?

Procrastinating, of course - what does any college student do when faced with work? Hence this post occurring now. However, the point of this post is valid for many of you reading this - how on earth am I going to be here until August? Here is where all your questions get answered.

Although the Vanderbilt semesters start in August and end in December, then go January to May, the semesters over here are totally different. The 'winter semester' begins in October and ends in February, with a substantial break for Christmas. The 'summer semester' begins in May and ends at the tail end of July. So why come over here so early, when classes at the university (die Uni, for short) don't start until May? Our group is doing an intensive german language course from the end of January until the end of March. For those month-counters among you, you are saying "but what about April?" Nothing about April. We are off for an entire month. Win.

This intensive language course is really, as its name suggests, rather intense. Class starts every morning at 8.30, and goes until either 2.30 PM or 11.45 AM (meaning 2-3 classes each day). We also have a Kaffeestunde (coffee hour) where we all meet together with the Resident Director and student assistants to the program and discuss things, get paperwork done, etc. Needless to say, it wears on one to have to get up at 7.15 every morning and catch an 8 AM bus.

The classes are, for the most part, rather interesting. We have four different types of courses: Textarbeit (text work, a reading intensive class where we discuss a lot of cultural issues and vocabulary), Grammatik (grammar, self evident what we learn), Schreiben (writing, again, self evident), and Phonetik (phonetics, learning pronunciation rules and how to sound less american - a very worthwhile class). The teachers are also rather interesting - here is an overview of the three main teachers that we have more than once a week:

Andy - Andy Legner. One of our two Textarbeit teachers. He is fun-loving, younger, and a little bit of an asshole (arschloch). He makes the class interesting, and an hour and a half with him goes by reasonably quickly. He is very vocab intensive, and it is through him we have weekly/bi-weekly vocab tests consisting of a choice of 20 words from a list of about 600 - 1000 words. Kind of intense.

Leonie - Leonie Ruhland. The other of our two Textarbeit teachers. She is also on the younger side for a professor, and incredibly nice. She is very helpful and understanding. With Leonie, we primarily discuss culture and do readings about said culture.

Sepp - Sepp Frank, our Grammatik teacher. Sepp is, I think, short for Guiseppe, and is possibly the coolest teacher on this planet. He is older, 60s perhaps. He has probably had an incredibly interesting life: he plays multiple instruments, including guitar, stand-up bass, ukulele, and (of course) accordion. His English is excellent, and he lived and worked for a time in the States when he was younger. With him, our journey through Grammatik takes a more wandering route incorporating elements from all things remotely related to German/germany - and this includes a daily Schokoladepause (chocolate break). Every class he brings chocolate, and every class we have a Schokoladepause to enjoy said delicious German confection.

Thats it. The two Schreiben teachers we have each once a week (including the one for whom I should be working on homework now...) and there is only one Phonetik teacher, whose name escapes me at the moment, that we have only once a week. All in all, I think my German will improve rapidly.

Bis Spaeter!