Eins, zwei, drei...

I'm currently on hiatus from the job hunt.  I've found a couple of schools that are going to write me the letters needed to apply for my visa.  I have an interview at another school next week, which hopefully will provide more stability (i.e. hours/higher pay), and several other schools that have my CV "on file" (the circular one?).  Right now, I'm really just waiting for those letters and on health insurance to kick in.  Hopefully I can apply for my visa sometime in the next couple weeks.  Oy vey.

In the meantime, I've been trying to stay occupied.  I've throughly distracted Bosse from his studies, and  now we both must get down to business.  For me, that means studying German.

I will channel a bit of Chandler Bing when I say: "Could German BE any more difficult to learn?"

Seriously.

Ok, so I've learned one foreign language.  I don't think I ever took for granted the relative ease of which I learned Spanish simply because I was moderately exposed to it from infancy.  I remember sitting in first and second grade and watching these ridiculous videos with a fluffy human dog teaching us the numbers and colors and words like gato and perro.  Although I can barely remember it, my transcript says I took a couple semesters of Spanish in middle school.  I vividly remember my years of Spanish in high school with Th-enora Th-inke who terrified us into learning the verb tenses.  I even dabbled in a 102, 201 and a conversation class in college, not yet giving up.  But, as predicted, it wasn't until I got to Spain that I was forced to really learn the language.  And then all those years of learning Spanish - from the human dog, Th-enora Th-inke, college, and all my southwest-community experiences in-between - came flooding back to me.

Until last year, my exposure to German was limited to the few yiddish words I picked up from TV.  And movies about World War II.  Oh, and bratwurst.  And strudel.  And sauerkraut.  I love sauerkraut.

Since dating Bosse, I've picked up my German textbooks several times, only to get a few pages in and then get distracted by work, or family, or really anything else more interesting.  But now, there are no excuses.  I have the time.  I'm in the venue.

And I need to learn.  There's nothing more frustrating than not being able to express yourself.  Any travelers will know this experience thoroughly: going to a country where you don't speak the language.  You are resourceful.  You will get by.  But it is exhausting, and sometimes absolutely anger-inducing.

So I'm learning.  Or trying to anyway.  I'm going through the textbook(s).  I'm doing the exercises.  I've made tons of notes, and diagrams, and lists.  I've littered our apartment with sticky notes identifying objects in their German equivalents.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the German language, a little insight into why I'm already pulling my hair out:

• Every noun in German has a "gender" - similar to Spanish.  Except there are three genders in German - masculine, feminine, and neuter.  Furthermore, there are few ways to predict the gender of the words by what they are or how they're spelled (unlike in Spanish).  This basically means that you must learn every noun with its corresponding article (ie gender).  Eg: der Tisch, die Küche, das Zimmer.
• There is not just one way to form a plural noun.  There are FIVE ways to form a plural, even these having their variations.  Again, their formations are not usually predictable or consistent.  This means that for every noun you learn, you must also learn its plural.  Eg: die Tische, die Küchen, die Zimmer.  
• There are four different "cases" for each noun, depending on its function in the sentence and/or what preposition it follows: the nominative, accusative, dative, genitive.  For each case, the article changes and sometimes even the ending of the nouns.  This means that are essentially 8 - count them: EIGHT - different "forms" of the noun and its article.  Eg: der Vater/den Vater/dem Vater/des Vaters/die Väter/die Väter/den Vätern/der Väter.
• Sentence structure is heinous, and is counter to English in most ways.  A question like "Können Sie mir bitte die Telefonnummer geben?" in English literally translates to: "Can you to me please the telephone number give?"  Where English typically puts the verb (and all parts of it) somewhere near the beginning of the sentence, German likes to keep the suspense going, giving you part of it at the beginning but the rest of it at the very end.  It's like conversational ransom. 
• Pronunciation.  This is the main reason why Bosse can't teach me.  Not because he doesn't know or try.  It's because when I try and repeat after him, I think I'm saying it the right way, and he disagrees.  It's like a bad comedy act that sort of reminds me of "Who's on first base" but it really doesn't feel that funny. 

Yeah.  And I'm just on page 80 of my textbook.

So really, what's motivating me now is that I'm betting high on the fact that it will all get easier with time and practice. 

And eventually, I would like to haggle with the Turks at the market.