Two
weeks got away from me pretty quickly.
Probably because I was so busy preparing for that big German test, the
one that decides if I qualify to take actual classes at a German University, the
DSH…hopefully that rings a bell. You may
be wondering, did she pass it!? Well, I will get to that later.
The
week before Easter was our last week of grammar course with Herr Dörr. We did all sorts of practice exams for the
DSH. DSH stands for "Deutsche Sprachprüfung für den
Hochschulzugang ausländischer Studienbewerber" (German language university
entrance exam for foreign students). Anyway,
we did listening tests, reading tests, grammar parts, and writing. After all of that, I was pretty sure I was
doomed. The practice listening test was about Gold, how it’s extracted from the
earth, why it is an important element and expensive, how it could help in the
future with cancer research. Yeah. Two straight pages of that in German, just
listening and trying to scramble down notes.
Somehow I was able to understand that Gold can shrink down without losing
or changing its properties and get inside a cancer cell and basically be heated
up until it blows up the cancer cell, like a little bomb. How cool is that, good job Gold.
That
week we also had a small excursion into the Freiwilligenbörse in Heidelberg,
which is a center that organizes volunteer work in the city. So you go set up a meeting with them, tell
them about yourself, and then they set you up with different options for
volunteer work. I had my meeting that
day and am hoping to volunteer at an elderly home here, basically so I can
spend more time speaking German to people and hearing it, and maybe also do
some arts and crafts. I am supposed to
be hearing from the woman sometime next week.
Each
week in class we have to give a presentation about our excursion, and this week
Sam and I decided to do a skit for ours.
We role played how a meeting at the Freiwilligenbörse actually goes,
since none of the other students had had their meeting yet, and Herr Dörr loved
it. We got a few good jokes in, like
about how Germans can’t spell my name (Helgi, that is how the woman at the
meeting tried to spell it). It was a good way to end the class and probably
distracted from the fact that our German wasn’t perfect. After that, I rolled my bag away to the bus
and then got on a train to Salzburg!
Herr Dörr kept saying, if I was the director of this program, I would
make a rule that says you can’t travel the weekend before the DSH! And I said
tsk, tsk, Herr Dörr, I am and adult and I can do what I want and I will still
ace that dumb test. So away I went, and I studied for at least 3 of the 5 hours
on the train ride.
Kevin
met me as I stepped off onto the platform.
We first went to Il Sole for pizza and a beer and it was delicious and
also very strange to be back there together, with me no longer being a student
in the program. Then we dropped my bags
off at the house and I was back in good ole’ Zimmer 7, the same room I had stayed
in while I was a student. We then went
to Hangar 7 and met with the current director of the program and his wife, and
then the two program assistants for drinks. That was an interesting place. Planes all over, all sorts of colors, glass
bowl of a building, to say nothing of the company. After that it was bed time
because we had a big journey into the mountains the next day to visit Jim, the
previous director of the Salzburg Program! He was the director when Kevin was a student
and also Kevin’s first year of working as the Program Assistant. After two years of just hearing stories about
Jim, all hilarious, I finally got to meet him and confirm that he was exactly like
Kevin always said he was. We laughed all
weekend.
And
when I say mountains, I mean MOUNTAINS. Bad
Gastein a place like no other. I think Kevin
said it is where Kaiser Franz Josef used to vacation. The mountains are so steep and huge and you
are just right there in the thick of it all.
When we first got there, it was all green and the air was fresh as can
be and I was having a hard time concentrating on our conversation at lunch
because I just kept looking out the window and seeing the valley way down below
us and the mountains straight in front of us jutting so high into the sky that
you couldn’t see their tops. Just google
images Bad Gastein and you still won’t even know what I’m talking about, it is
a different world. Anyway, Jim has
retired into the mountains and we stayed with him for two nights in his
apartment, halfway up the mountain and above a farm house. Dream life. I will include some pictures of
the view, but it won’t do it justice.
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| Sitting on Jim's front porch |
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| Whiteout is hiding the huge mountain just across the way |
The
next day we went to Sportgastein which is a little resort-like
place where people were skiing down the bright, white mountains at incredible
speeds and decline. How do people do
that? I would literally die if I ever
even tried. I guess I’ll stick with
golf. We sat outside in the sun and the
reflection off the snow was so bright that I couldn’t keep my eyes from
watering. It was one of the only times
in my life when I have ever wanted sunglasses.
Otherwise sunglasses are bothersome.
Kevin and I walked over to one of the other restaurants and had a beer
and not until we were almost finished did we notice that the Italian couple
sitting across from us had a Newfoundland puppy sitting under their table! So
as soon as they finished, we got the bill and finished too, and then followed
them out of the restaurant and awkwardly tried to catch up to them so we could
pet their dog. Rocco was his name and he
was four months old and on the same level of cuteness as my pets. He was fluffy and he just kept diving into
the snow and rolling around and I want one!
He was the greatest. Luckily
Kevin is good at striking up conversations with strangers, so we walked back
and chatted with them the whole time. I
mostly just watched Rocco.
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| Sportgastein, everything was white |
When
we got back to the first restaurant, we found Jim sitting with a table full of Austrians,
just laughing and having a good time. He
and Kevin are one in the same. We sat
with them for probably two hours or so, drinking Schnapps and being merry, and
they were all very nice, even if I couldn’t understand every single word they
were saying. It was like they had taken
us in as part of the family. As annoyed
as I may get when Kevin says it all the time, Austria and Austrians definitely
give off a different type of energy than most places and people. Everyone greets each other when they walk
into a room and there’s a sense of familiarity that is hard to describe.
On
Easter morning we woke up to over half a foot of snow outside. We had to go back to Salzburg that day, but
we got a few more lovely hours with Jim before that, eating at a nice little
restaurant near the train station and sitting in his car, waiting for a big
work truck to back up all the way down a windy, snow covered road because there
wasn’t enough room for us to pass him. Oh
the mountain life. I would never be able
to drive up there. We said goodbye to
Jim and were soon back in Salzburg.
Kevin had some more work things to attend to after we went to the Stiegl
Brewery for dinner, so I relaxed and studied some more so Herr Dörr would not
later shame me. The next day we left to go back to Heidelberg and finally the
sun was shining! Oh but don’t let me
forget to write about how the whole five hour train ride back, Kevin became acquainted
with a 19 year old Austrian girl, and mother and her 10 year old daughter, and
then an Irish-German couple and their daughter, basically anyone that came into
our couchette was doomed. It was non-stop talking the whole way, about anything
and everything, but at least it was German practice. But I’m just giving Kevin a hard time; I think
it’s cool that he can strike up a conversation with anyone. Unfortunately, it just hinders my special
talent, ability to sleep on trains.
We
got back to Heidelberg and the sun was shining, still cold out, but not
gray. We met up with Sam at the AJY
Center and then got some gelato, stressed about the DSH being the next day, and
walked up to the Schloss together for a good view of Heidelberg and to breathe
in some fresh air.
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| Art |
That night I was
supposed to study, but I wanted to talk to Emmy instead, so I did and just
figured I know what I know at this point. Tuesday
morning, it was go time. Our group of 13
all filed into the New University building, where all of the other foreign
students who were hoping to be able to study at Uni Heidelberg that semester were
lined up. There were probably about a
hundred students who took the test. We
all sat down in a lecture hall type room and had about four hours to do the
written test. The reading part was about
social media and studies about how it affects people or the world, so fairly
interesting, but I was really slow at answering the questions and so I had less
time to do the grammar part, which there were a few out of 12 or 13 questions
that I totally bombed and had no idea what to do. Then we had a ten minute break. After the first half of the test I was
thinking, shit. I am not going to pass
this. This is the worst. And then the second half began with the
listening part, which was about the future of the snow levels and global
warming type stuff and how they have created snow machines to make more snow
for the ski resorts. It wasn’t too
difficult to understand because they guy read it relatively slowly and the
questions about it weren’t too hard to answer.
Then the next part was a graph about how many people use plastic grocery
bags and don’t reuse them and environmental nonsense and we had to describe the
graph and then write a composition comparing Germany to our home country with
regard to plastic bags and being environmentally friendly, which I found to be
the easiest part of the test, and I even used some of the new sophisticated
sentence structures that I learned in class, booyah. So overall, I didn’t know how to feel about
the whole test, because I did bad and then good, maybe, you never know.
We
all rallied around in the AJY Center afterward and talked about how it was for us
and how we thought we did. Then, if we
passed the written part, two days later, we would take the oral part, and then
find out how well we did overall.
On
Wednesday, Herr Dörr took us to Speyer, a town about 40 minutes away, to have a
little time away from studying or worrying about test results. We went into a few churches and domes and
towers, you know, the typical European things, but the best part was when Sam
and I had lunch with Herr Dörr. We were
all about to split for an hour lunch break and Sam asked him if he knew of a
good, cheap place to eat, and Herr Dörr knows everything of course, so he said
why don’t you come see where I’m going to eat and see if you like it. So I followed and crashed their date, but it’s
fine. He led us to a small Italian restaurant
where they were serving pizza and a salad for only 5.50 and we dined together
and learned some things and spoke German with him and got him to like us for
the next hour. It was amazing. All sorts of amazing. The rest of the day pales in comparison.
The
next day, Thursday, we all had to be at the AJY Center at 10 am to find out if
we’d passed the written part and if we did, to prepare for the oral test that
afternoon. Well, the results were posted
and everyone was rushing around like mad to try to figure out if they’d made it
to the oral exam. Out of our 13, I think
8 people passed the written part, and thank god I was one of them. Now, it’s interesting, because passing the
written exam, doesn’t exactly mean you’ll pass the test overall, and even if
you do and you end up with a DSH 1, as they say, you still aren’t qualified to
take classes at a German University. You
have to get a DSH 2 in order to do that, and a DSH 3 for some of the more
advanced Masters programs and classes.
So even though I made it to the oral test, I could still end up with a
DSH 1, which would mean nothing to me. I
wanted that 2.
All
morning we prepared for our oral exams.
The structure of the oral exam is so, that you go into a room with two
interviewers and one other student and talk for fifteen minutes. Beforehand, you are given about ten minutes
to read an article, and then you’re expected to be able to summarize it and
answer questions about it. When you
first sit down with the interviewers, they ask you about yourself and to warm
up your German you start with easy stuff like where you’re from and why you
want to study at a German University. Well, when my interviewer heard I was
from Oregon, he started talking about how he has friends that live in Oregon,
around Portland, and what’s that other well known town south of there? Eugene?
I say. Yes, yes Eugene, right, now does
that mean you go to the University of Oregon? he asks. And before I could stop
myself, I answered very passionately, NEIN! Every Oregonian can understand
exactly why I would react this way, but a German man has absolutely no
idea. So he sits and looks at me
strangely and asks me why, and I go on to try to explain about the rivalry between
the Oregon State University and University of Oregon, which of course is even
more of a mess, because they don’t have any such thing as rivalry between
universities and their universities don’t even have sports teams and I’m
thinking, oh god, I am going to fail this test.
So embarrassing. Meanwhile the
other student I am testing with is from Cameroon, Africa.
So
we go on to talk about the article we both read, which was a debate about if TV
makes kids dumb or not. We were asked
about our opinions on the topic and I talked a bit about how it’s a pretty big
issue in America right now and lots of kids have their own TVs and that’s all
they want to do, rather than go play outside, and then the question gets
flipped to Cameroon girl and she goes, well not many people in my village have
TVs back home. Boof. Now I’m just going
to fail on principal. But other than
those few mishaps, my speaking wasn’t too terrible, and I only messed up word
order a few times. Still I walk out
feeling like I’m definitely not going to get a DSH 2.
Meanwhile
I should say that Kevin has begun his intensive German course at the Goethe
Institut in Mannheim, so he has class every day from 8 to 1. It is usually so that when we are out in
public we speak German and when we are at home, it’s a mixture of both. But we can go hours just speaking in German,
and I like that. So Thursday evening we
just hung out and relaxed together and then he left early Friday morning for
class and I slept in a little longer and waited for the test results to roll
in. They were posted online at 10. A few minutes past, I went onto the website
and pulled up the list. Then I had to
scroll through it find my number, 451176, and as I looked to the right of it, I
saw a nice, shiny, DSH-2 staring back at me.
Thank. God. Immediately I texted
Sam, who was on a train to Berlin, to let her know that we both got DSH-2 and
that we are awesome and official and awesome.
I was honestly so thankful to see that number sitting there, just to
know that my German has gotten better and all of the studying and being here
had really paid off. It was a
relief.
I
know, now nothing I say is going to be interesting anymore, because that was
the big climax of the post, but still, a few more things have happened
since. Like when I went to Mannheim that
afternoon to meet Kevin and we had lunch at the Eichbaum Brewery because his
best friend’s last name is Ineichen, and he had to get some paraphernalia for
him.
And then later we met up with a German friend who did a year abroad last
year at University of Redlands and was in Heidelberg for the weekend. We had some coffee and cake and walked around
a bit, it was really nice to see her and her boyfriend again.
Then
the most exciting part of Saturday was waking up and going to the grocery store
with my boyfriend to buy cleaning supplies and spending two hours cleaning my
whole apartment together. But then the
best part of that was that we have a vacuum in the apartment, but it is broken
and no longer has the part that zooms across the floor connected to it, so I
literally vacuumed the apartment with just the little neck part that is
supposed to connect to the zoomer, which has the diameter of about a golf ball. I told Kevin, this must be how elephants
feel. And now the carpet in my bedroom
and the hallway are so clean, it’s unbelievable. And we also bought new light bulbs for the
kitchen and hallway, which had been out of commission for the past few weeks,
and now I finally have light in my apartment again. And the mopping and the new sponges and a
broom! We decided we are really adults
now, because we spent all Saturday morning cleaning.
Today
it is finally sunny again and I want to go out and make a picture tour of
Heidelberg and play on the mountain tops, but Kevin (aka my photographer) is,
as usual, writing a paper last minute and I have to wait for him to finish. But
I think I’m going to make him go out now, before we miss the sun. It’s going to be amazing. Game on,
Heidelberg! Here I come!
And since you stuck with me for this whole post, a special peek into what Kevin and I did last night:
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| HP! |
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| I don't know if it's more embarrassing for him or me. |
