I've decided to learn german. no, you read that right, german. Now, you'd think a girl from canada would start out learning their second offical language (french) but no, not me. I have a background in french (6 years of elementry/middle school french, 1 year of high school french, and 3 years of science-humaine (social studies, in french), and I can't speak more then a few words of it anymore. But i've chose german. why? because I'm thinking about maybe going to germany one day, and I'm nervous about going to a country that I can't speak the language at all, unless of couse I'm staying on an all inclusive resort, where they speak english and serve me unlimited fruity-alcholic drinks. Not that I can afford to go to germany, or even one of those all inclusive places(a trip that would actually be much cheaper), but that gives me lots of time to learn german. I have a learn to speak german audio clip I found on the internet, as well as a free, online, 5 week course in german, from about.com's About U. This is a very neat thing I've discovered recently (read: yesterday), and...well it's just very neat. There are a bunch of topics, and they'll e-mail you with weekly lessons and what not. It's very cool actually, and I'm thinking of taking another lesson on something completly different at the same time as this german one, although I havn't decided what yet. I'll keep you posted(I know, I know, you're on the edge of your seats, waiting for this riviting information..). anyway, I have that. and I'll probably eventually buy a book or two, maybe another auido cassette/cd thing. I recently read an e-book called How to learn any language by ...er...someone(I can't find the file to check right now, but if you really want to know then just drop me a line and I'll get back to you..). it was written in 1980-something, so it's a little outdated, but it contains a lot of helpful stuff. Anyway, it suggests using all kinds of different sources at once. so that's what my plan is. Problem is, I went to my localest of local book stores, and they didn't have any learning german books. I have another not-as-local-but-still-pretty-local store I can try, so hopfully that will work out for me. yay! So I'm all excited about this. This weeks lesson sent to me was common greetings and das alphabet. I only got a 50% on my first test (which was only the alphabet, btw), but that's a pass by most standards, right? and on most of the ones I got wrong, I had it mostly right, just one letter was wrong(there was an audio clip of common german abbreviations, and you write down what the letters are..). so not too bad. It's only Monday. I'm going to keep going over the lessons over and over untill the next one arrives in my e-mail box, but I'm not going to repeat the test. I'll stay with my 50%. I'm only just begining.

anyway, that's about all. I also might learn to knit, because my hands are going to have lots of idle time at the job I'm going to hate, which starts next week. but I think I'll wait untill next month, or maybe a few months, and buy an actual 'lear to knit' book for that. Don't want to over do myself in the month of March, right? well...maybe I'll wait. I don't know.

so If I don't update a lot this month or in the comming months, assume I'm learning german/learning to knit/learning something else/getting lots of exercise/working/playing too many computer games or any combination of those and many other things that may stop me from updating. Oh, add "i got really lazy" to the list too. yeah, that's a good one.

dee

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