“Es ist ein Wurzelkanal…”

The dentist office - clear on the other side of town, but they speak English, too.

So it’s a root canal. Gott sei Dank for German health insurance - which, I got, by the way, the same day as my internet modem. I never really needed to decide which one I wanted first. Although, unfortunately, just because I have a modem, doesn’t mean I have internet.

I have no idea why it doesn’t work. It says ‘connected’ both for WiFi and ethernet. And today I received a letter in the mail, stating that if my internet existed, it would have a limit of 10 MB. So, in the meantime, I’ve kept myself busy with grocery shopping and Arabic homework. 

Which brings me to study part of this exchange: this was my first week of classes. True, my translation class doesn’t begin until next week, but I’m already pretty psyched about the rest of my courses.

The goods.

My Arabic class, luckily is starting where I left off in the States; however, we are only covering three chapters. I need to cover the rest of the book - which as slow as this class is going to be, there shouldn’t be a problem. This also explains why they have an A4 level of Arabic, when the European Framework goes by A1 and A2, and maybe A1.2, etc. This framework, by the way, makes way more sense to me than the American structure of “beginner, intermediate, advanced”. The terms in the European Framework are not as cumbersome and the definition of each division and subdivision are clear to a point. 

This is how it compares, at least based on my experiences at UT:

A1 = beginner, 1^st two semesters at the Uni

A2 = also beginner. Second 2 semesters at the Uni

B1 - advanced classes.

C1/C2 is considered fluency. If you want another idea of how this works, the Russian book for the beginner class here covers both A1 and A2. Мост 1 and its accompanying workbook, are together more compact, less expensive, and  more flexible than the textbooks I’ve looked at in the US.

Lecture hall in the Center for Near Eastern Languages

And for those of you who are already bored, a class taught in English might be of interest. Mondays I’m learning about the Caucasus region in a seminar styled class, meaning I’ll have to give a presentation at some point. It’s a term frequently thrown around on the news, but never explained. For the record, we’re covering areas in Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Dagestan, Chechnya: from southern Russia (think Sochi) towards northern Turkey and Iran. Instead of glaring into the political side, it’ll be geared towards looking at the local perspective. 

And if you’re interested in what it’s like to be at a Germany university, it’s completely relaxed. Except for Arabic, I have my other courses once a week. So far I haven’t had to buy books, each class is about 75 minutes long except my German language course, which runs 3 hours. Even in Arabic, we’ll have no exams or quizzes until the final. Homework is a bare minimum. Weekends begin on Thursday after 10 am.