Wittenberg Summer 2012: June 11 2012 + Special Zoo Assignment

Today was really fun. I didn’t think it was going to be a good day, being Monday and all, but in the end I had a lot of fun at the Zoo and visiting Austra and hanging out at the Independent and Sweet Apple that all the little annoying aspects of a Monday weren’t as bad.

We did a lot more actual work today in our classes. Phonetics is still obnoxious, as in, the fact that I cant say the sounds they can is obnoxious because I want to be able to not sound so obviously American, but, at least we didn’t play any of the games they like to play that don’t have anything to do with the language or grammar.

In Frau Schimmelpfennig’s class we went through a list of verbs, their meaning, and their different forms so that was really useful and to be honest what I was hoping these classes would be like - actually learning the language, not just playing a bunch of games, doing useless activities like writing poems that don’t need to be grammatically correct.

I really did enjoy the zoo.

It was really interesting. It was very small, and I guess it’s richtig name is “Tierpark” (pet park) not actually a zoo, or maybe they cal their zoos “Tierpark” I need to ask but my ghastfamilie keeps correcting Simonne when she calls it a zoo so I am guessing then it must be rightfully called a Tierpark.

I have named him Ziege ("Z" for short). I love him and he is coming home with me. I will probably have to check a bag to get him onto the plane though.

Some of the new words we learned today were:

Schrecklich = terrible

Schnörkel (m) [-s]= flourish, frills

Haupt- = head, chief, prime, major (z.B. Hauptsatz)

Abgucken = to copy, pick up habit from

Betrügen = to cheat, swindle

Erproben = to try out

Vocal (m)= vowel

Today's Zoo Assignment:

Totenkopfäffchen:

Totenkopf = skull + äffchen = to ape, mimic