I have news. Are y’all ready?

Divorce
In the evening of October 1st, I got a message from my lawyer that the judge had signed the divorce decree, making me officially divorced. The decree was signed Sept 30th, which meant that September officially ended my old life, and October 1st began my new one. There is still paperwork to go, but the divorce itself is no longer mired in red tape and sitting in a weird Schrödinger-esque yes-but-no space. Hurrah!

The day after I got the message, I celebrated. It was a nice day – a tarot spread to start me on my new life. A lunch out at an Italian restaurant, where I ordered in German! A bit of Halloween shopping and decorating, as well as a trip to the shops for some celebratory treats and wine. Then I made chocolate chip cookies and watched the week’s episode of Bake Off (biscuit week, good timing!) while eating said cookies with Rainstorm.

School
The first day of my intensive German course was on Monday. I’d spoken to the school the previous Friday when the class schedule came out because I wasn’t sure which level I was supposed to be in. I signed up for the very beginning level (A1.1) but since I’ve spent a year studying German immersion-style through Rosetta Stone, I suspected I might need to begin in A1.2. I took a placement test on the website for A1.1 and scored 80%, and the school told me that yeah, I probably need to be in A1.2, and that there would be another placement test on the first day of class. (There was. I took it and ended up solidly in the middle of the A1.2 range.)

So now that I’ve been there for my first full week, here are my impressions:

Commute: I get up far earlier than I like since I have a 1.5-hour commute. I don’t live in the same city as my school, so I have to walk to the train station (20 mins), catch a train (when there are frequent delays in the German train system), then spend 30-45 mins on the train (depending on if it’s the express or regional) to get to the main station in Cologne. Once at the main train station, it’s almost no time at all to pop into the subway, get on one of two lines that leave every few minutes, and take two stops to my school. But it all adds up. I leave the house by 7:15 or so, and usually arrive 20-30 mins before class begins (during which time, I eat breakfast). The commute back takes just as long, and I usually get home around 1:15 to 1:30. It’s six hours total of commuting and class, and class is only half of that.

Classroom: There are about ten students in my class from a wide range of locations: Iran, Thailand, Singapore, Turkey, France, Kenya, Brazil, and the Philippines, then of course me, the lone American. In general, most of the students are quite friendly. Most are in their 20s and 30s, with only one that I know of also in their 40s like me. Many of them seem to know each other, probably because they would have been in the last A1.1 class together.

Instruction: It’s quite strange to find myself in a classroom again, especially with folks who treat this like they can memorize enough to pass a test, rather than actually trying to learn a language. Not all of them are like this, but enough that I find it really amusing. It’s hilarious when the teacher is trying to get them to branch out from the textbook and they don’t seem to realize it. For example, we did an exercise where we had to ask our “neighbor” (table partner) questions and write down their answers. Then the teacher would ask each of us what our neighbor said about XYZ. Only she would ask by name – like, “What time does Thistle eat dinner?” Of course, the response ought to be something like “Thistle eats dinner at 7:00,” but the response from most of the students would be “my neighbor eats dinner at …” because that’s what they’d written down.

On the other hand, when partnered up, it’s easier to try to get an organic conversation going, even if it’s difficult to converse with a limited vocabulary on both sides, plus everyone having different accents and different ways of pronouncing the German, and all of us making mistakes along the way. The teacher is great at floating around the room and pointing out corrections without making anyone feel silly or stupid. Also, she had no problem with calling me by my chosen name, and said she would use they/them pronouns for me in English (even though this isn’t an option in German – I said “she” was fine, it’s the same word as “they” in German anyway).

Given that I’m coming into this class from a different angle, having spent a year with immersion lessons rather than taught-partially-in-English lessons, I find myself really far ahead in some ways, but really far behind in others. An immersion program struggles to teach certain types of grammar, like how subject articles change in different cases (accusative, dative, etc). That’s a thing that’s much more easily taught in a classroom environment. There’s also certain colloquial phrases and classroom verbiage that I’m unfamiliar with. However, because I’m ahead with other things (I’ve learned far more verb tenses, for instance), I’m able to focus on the things I don’t know instead of trying to catch up in everything. It makes me feel like I’m in the right place – not in the next class up, where I would struggle to understand, and not in the class just below, where I’d feel like I was wasting my time.

Timeline: I’ve booked and paid for a year’s worth of classes. There are ten levels (A1.1 through C1.2), plus a preparatory course for the C1 exam, and I’m starting at the second level. If I manage to do one level per month without repeating any – which I think is overly ambitious – I’d have three months of prep course. That also means I have three months of repeat courses if I want to get through the end of C1.2. If I want to remain in German on a different visa after the year, I need to get to at least a B2 level of language. Goal is to reach that one by May/June. Hopefully that gives me enough time for the application process.

Anyway, that’s all about my double new beginning! I’m probably going to be around the blog less often given that I now spend roughly six hours a day either at school or commuting, plus there will be homework and all the rest. So if y’all see me disappear for a bit, that’s why. It’s a good disappearance, at least!