why is it so easy for you?

im just going to jump right over the fact that i havent written in blah blee bloh

[Warning: this is about to get real real long]

im going to share a little bit (or a lottle bit) about my class today, the reason being that something incredulous happened today. i feel, for the sake of clarity, that i would need to go several generations back in time to paint a clear and precise picture. but for practicality we'll have to go back just a few months.

LOS! (a very affective way of saying "lets go!" in german)

the year was 2010, november. in a dark alleyway waited a man with an envelope, he tried vainly to shield it from the indiscriminate rain drops falling from the steely sky.... not really but doesnt that sound like a great story?!

LOS! ehrlich...

so! i've been taking german since about the middle november for reals. before that i took a correspondence course in german for one semester (i.e. 3 months, while working full time and planning a wedding 스트레스! but that's another story) last spring or something, in order to "prepare" myself... all the stuff i learned in that class became redundant during the first week or two of the INTENSIV (<--- german, and yes thats what its called) course.

basically here's how its structured: go to class for three hours a day (this is for real dude!) hopefully something that has been covered in that time will stick to your grey matter. so i show up to class and everything is easy peasy cotton cheezy, oh wait, that was a fictitious statement! totally overwhelming but thats the point, i didnt know what to expect but it was all german, all the time, all over the place. it was really awesome and really intense at the same time. my teacher didnt (doesnt) even speak english so... yeah total submersion (<---feel free to use your movie-trailer-man-voice here)

everything goes stumbling along its way and for reasons i dont feel are appropriate to discuss on the interwebs, i felt very motivated to do well and learn this thing! (or get 'er done as some might say)

so i does my homeworks, comes to class and so forth, time goes by... final test day what?! yeah that should show how good my german was at this point, i didnt even pick up on when the test was, so my brain says to me he says "oh dear friend, lets give the old try, what d'ya say?" so stumble stumble, "im supposed to write a flippin letter what the?" balh blah blah, surprise of surprises, i passed, 42 out of 45 even! great success! i was so relieved, i thought i would not do very well. so then im like oh german is easy friends? ringdingdong wrongwrongwrongwrong

enter stage right: INTENSIV2 (the villain of the piece) here's were things get pretty murky, distressing, cold and sniffly. hold on to your face cuz it could become dangerously shocked or possibly fall off all together.

a little background: basically it was the worst winter ever, averaging 6.58 meters of snow a day (probably) so of course i was sick all the time and what not, and the trams were being total wussbags and not going cuz it was "impossible" or "dangerous", i know right?

so then we begin, the class is a composite, some old people are gone for whatever reason and new people have taken their places, from the word "los" things are shaky. someone, we'll call her "the ogre of budapest" hmm too harsh? alright how about V? no! thats too cool. Q, Q has always been my least favorite consonant, so codependent. alright where were we? ok so Q suggests everyone to be great friends and do things together, oh did i say suggest? i meant demand. such an overbearing one! im having severe difficulty in finding the words. i shall illustrate with perhaps the most direct assault; oh! first i must introduce another! we will call her dee for drama, the sort of person who laughs as much as she speaks, not in an easy, joyful way but in a vapid and acrid way.

READY?!

so im lazy. i take the elevator to the 3rd floor where we have class. walking out of the elevator i see dee sitting on the floor at the end of the hallway, maybe 30 meters away, and think nothing of it, walk into class and take my seat. moments later dee enters, limping and saying that she fell by the stairs and that i saw her fall and refused to help. at this point i felt really terrible that i hadnt gone to help her, so in all the fuss and what not the teacher somehow misunderstands and thought that she had fallen down the stairs (come to find out she tripped at the bottom of the stairs and the nurse said she was fine)and calls for a nurse, then V decides to reveal my villainy to the world by shouting about how evil/bad/rude/mean/selfish i am. (30 year old "woman") saying i only think about my self and dont care about anyone else. all i can say is i hope beyond all hope that this is not an accurate depiction of me. she kept turning to others for confirmation and thankfully she didnt get it, people smiled at me and said "no, maliana is good" i felt a sliver of comfort in this. but simply put, i felt AWFUL. i couldnt understand what i did that would provoke such a reaction, and honestly started to believe i was terrible (i must have been! to be the subject of such venom) from then on i was a targeted at any moment she saw fit, mostly she would pretend i didnt exist (for which i was grateful) or tell the class that she hated me (true story) planning a "class" event and specifically not inviting me (i know, i know, but no, she wasnt 5 years old) or opine about my unimportance. after that i realised i was not evil, but that she was a bully and i was her target of choice, that didnt make it any easier, not really. but having that knowledge helped me to study harder and do the best i could. thats making it sound really rosy, it wasnt, but i got used to it.

TEST TIME rolls around this time i knew it was coming but didnt want to psyche myself out or over prepare (ahem lazy?). so i take a whack at it, straight forward, listening, reading, writing. we got the results by email, (all the scores in a mass email) which i didnt know (again awesome german skills kicking in) so i show up for class and everyone knows what i got but me, my teacher congratulates me saying i got a "sehr gut" grade, im just puzzled/awkward/nervous and say thank you. then telma (a nice lady! [and yes thats still a code name]) tells me i got 100% and im pretty shocked, and really awkward feeling that everyone knew before me or at all! enter the title of the post. at that point everyone assumed, because i had gotten everything right that it was somehow easier for me than them. i mean maybe somehow it is, icelandic has a similar structure to german. i felt like my achievement (trivial as it was) was cheapened a bit. german is hard for me too! i dont know why or even if, its easier for me than the others. so all of the sudden people were asking me about grammar concepts (of which there are approximately 1.337 tonnes), what words mean and the like. its weird... i feel like the spiderman of german for noobs. so i try to help and it feels really good when i help someone understand something!

INENSIV3 so! new class, same drill, im starting to feel like a veteran right now, watching passively as people come and go. telma, dee and Q are all here and some new folks. one of which is a controvertial american (hes nice!) who Q decided was her next prey. later she quit, i think she realised no one wanted to sit by her, i know it sounds juvenile but i think that was important for her. i feel bad about it but since then class has become an entirely different experience for me, and i think the others as well.

moral of the stories: people suck! there will always be nei sayers and bullies but it's ok cuz they just suck and maybe cant help it. im still not very good at dealing with them.

since i like learning german, i decided to do an experiment, cuz it's so "easy" for me i though i might try something that i think would be hard, so im learning korean! theres a lady from korea in my class, we'll call her Park Bom, she studied education in korea and offered to teach me! she is super nice! we'll see how it goes. 화이팅!

dude i dont really expect any of you to have gotten this far, just needed to vent my brain spleen, know what im saying?

long story even longer, i hope your face is still intact, if such is not the case this should help

love and happiness.