Hooray! Yikes! Wonderful! Oh, no!

Another quiet day on the range. I've recently been spending a good chunk of time reading my favorite book ever, Broken For You, nur auf deutsch (Die Porzellansammlerin). This is not only because it's so great, but because I've been getting somewhat frustrated with where my level of German is at compared to where it could be if I was surrounded ONLY by German all day rather than Genglisch. I know it's gotten better and all that good stuff, but I keep comparing my experience here with my utter and complete French immersion in Belgium. Sometimes I feel like having friends here is cheating and that this isn't hard enough. I want to learn more. (I know that's all silly and that I'll learn lots in time and am having a completely different and uncomparable experience now to that in Belgium, but still.) Thus spending time going through pages of deliciously challenging German translation, looking up vocab, and writing down interesting new words to remember makes me feel a little better about what I'm here for.

So! It's a good thing all of that will change on Tuesday when I have my first class. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I've decided to join with the rest of the world and go back to school after not having had any classes since the end of... April. Excluding the orientation classes, of course. (Wow.) On Tuesday I'll be taking a Smith course on Theater in Hamburg auf deutsch as well as a French linguistics course at the Uni-Hamburg, not auf deutsch... That evening begins rehearsals for the big choral works choir I'm hoping to join. On Wednesday I have my other Uni-Hamburg class on Volkskunde, which is based on German and European folklore. The hopefully-temporary day for my Smith grammar class is Friday, though we're trying to change that in order to have longer and thus more travel-able weekends. (If it works, I will potentially have a 4-5 day weekend!) Classes only meet once a week, though I'll probably end up having a weekly tutoring session scheduled for my folklore class. I'm both chomping at the bit and a little stomach-churningly anxious for classes to start. I'm excited to meet new people while also being daunted by the idea of having to involve myself in an entirely new community. Clearly contradictions are my forte. Should be fun.

This afternoon Liz Chase and I went on an adventure to a big, open unleashed dog-walking park on the outskirts of the city. It completely delighted me to see all the fun furry creatures running around being adorable. My favorite was a cocker spaniel with a tail that wiggled everywhere it went.