Bienvenidos a Deutschland

So I spoke more Spanish today than I have all of last year combined. That's right: Spanish.

You see, when they asked me to talk about the "American Dream" the other day, completely on the spot, I started off talking about immigrants and the whole idea of rags to riches. I rambled on a bit as I tried to work out for myself what the American Dream was and suddenly found myself talking about my grandparents coming from other countries to come make a life for themselves here. Well, apparently that spread and next thing I know one of the Spanish teachers here came and asked me to speak in his Spanish class.

"All right," I think. After all, I'm still very new here and trying to get along with all the teachers. I'll do it. Within the hour I was already regretting, thinking how the most Spanish I've really uttered lately is "Hola" and "Las flautas, por favor." Next time we spoke, I found out he thought I had been to Mexico for some reason and was going to have the students ask me about the cultural and political situation there. I let him know I had never been there, but he still wanted me to come anyway. Well, today I caught up with him just before class and, in Spanish, told him it may not be such a good idea after all since I...definitely need work in that area. How my vocab and grammar both are lacking and so on. He just laughed and told me it would be fine. He even sat down and chatted with me a bit in Spanish before hand to make me feel better and find out a bit about me. It turns out we actually have a few things in common. He's from Cuba and actually studied linguistics! What's more, he even learned quite a bit of Russian and studied in Russia for several months.

Anyway, the Q&A with the students was all right. I guess I felt better with him atleast knowing before hand that my Spanish was not fantastic, so I didn't feel so foolish making so many mistakes in front of a native speaker. He seemed happy I came anyway.

In other news, I'm going to play in a chess tournament here! How exciting. Finally, something to do! In another class, the teacher had the students ask me questions in English about myself and America. It came up that chess is one of my hobbies and he just lit up right away. It turns out he runs the chess club here and is a member of a chess club in town. That club is having a tournament and he said I could come play. So we're leaving tomorrow evening.

I have a place to live now. I'm renting a room from an old woman not 2 minutes from the school. It's very cheap, especially considering the area. It's fully furnished (big bed, chairs, desk, tv, etc), I have a full bath, and even access to her washer and dryer. I'll post pictures later. It's not glamorous and obviously used to be her daugher's room (with her daughter's rather creepy artwork up on the walls), but it works. It's cheap and it's close to the school.