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Posts tagged "Deutsch"

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Non-native English celebration fest?

As long as this doesn't happen while I'm still buried under my dissertation, I am definitely up for it. I've already been looking for excuses to write in German occasionally, despite the fact that maybe two of my friends would be able to understand it.

And then we all get to find out how shamefully rusty my written German has become. But I'll probably enjoy it, anyway.

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I have a couple of proper posts in the works (as usual), and when I've given the presentation about my dissertation plan on Friday (nervousnervousnervous) I might actually post some of them! There are ones about my love-hate relationship with the Fantasy genre, and stuff I have learned so far in my degree, and my plans for the future etc.

But for now, I'm going to show you (well, at least those of you that understand German. Sorry, the rest of you.) my new favourite poem. I caught up on Bücherwelt on the tube today, and one of the episodes contained this:

klos

klos, sein da wo klos?
du gehen rund den knödel
du dann finden den türen
sein drauf stehn >männeken<
du dort treten innen
du dort finden den rinnen
du machen auf den hos.
du wissen was dann tun?
ja ich wissen was dann tun.
so ich gehen rund den knödel
ich dann finden den türen
sein drauf stehn >männeken<
ich dort treten innen
ich dort finden den rinnen
ich machen auf den hos
ich nix finden darinnen.
rasch ich zumachen den hos
rasch ich treten außen
finden den türen neben
sein drauf stehn >fraunen<
sein ich erstaunen
daß in mein leben das
ich haben können vergessen

Ernst Jandl


It's even better read out loud.

I like English poetry, too, but German poetry is always my favourite. I think I'll add that to my post-graduation plans: learn more about German poetry.

...Ich weiss nicht, warum ich den Rest dieses Eintrags nicht einfach auch auf Deutsch geschrieben habe. Na ja, whatever.

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17. 5. 2011 12:04 am | Personal, Syndicated | Tags: , | Comment
I had a lesson with the tiny Germans today. We made spiders! 8D


Mine had three eyes, but one fell off.


Tiny boy-German made a spider that was a cowboy first (it had a lasso), and then turned into a princess ('cause he made it a crown). Yeah, tiny boy-German is pretty awesome.


I got my test voucher for the JLPT yesterday! Much excitement. :3 I think I'll do one of my past papers tomorrow. Things I will also do tomorrow:

- Go to the post office
- Edit my personal statement
- Finish colouring robot commission
- Find a cobbler who will fix the zipper on my boots

Awesome!


I've read the first three chapters of Colony now.

A vague summary of stuff that's happened: Read More →
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The exhibition was pretty cool! Many pretty things. I love Aztec Mexica writing so much. This was probably my favourite thing, but I can't find a proper picture of it online. I'm amused that the guy on the left is named "leg". Friday at 3pm was the wrong time to go, though; it was massively crowded. And people kept. Standing. Right in front of me. While I was reading something. щ(≖益≖щ) *murders*

I finished reading the Third God as well, and the ending was surprisingly good! (almost everyone I was really attached to survived! :O) In the last few chapters everything sort of comes together and you see the huge cycle of history that the characters only occupy a small, final part of, and it shifts the way in which you look at the story in a really interesting way and FFF I LOVE IT, OK. I can't really say more without spoiling, which I won't because I need you all to read it so I have someone to talk about it to. It's main selling point is the setting, I think, which I'll probably talk about more later. The author also has a huge amount of world building notes up on his website, which makes him my favourite.

I think I'll probably end up reading it all over again soon from this new perspective and to look for foreshadowing. :3

The book I'm reading now is one my mum brought me from Germany a little while ago; Die Praktikantin by Yannik Mahr. It's a sort of satire romance intrigue, I think, about a Journalist who gets put in charge of a small rural newspaper, not the big metropolitan one he had his eyes on, and hires a pretty intern, and then according to the blurb something mysterious happens, idk. It's really amusingly written, so far.

I had my second German lesson last Monday, and it went really well. :D I ran out of time before I ran out of things to do, and everything. Spent the first half an hour or so talking about the Middle Ages, because the kids didn't know anything. They hadn't even heard of the reformation, apparently. I'm probably going to give them a short history lecture every week, starting with the Völkerwanderung next Monday, since it's relevant to the Nibelungen. I'm making a ~powepoint presentation~. 8D

I also have about two thirds of a blog post written about Nick Griffins hilarious "indigenous British who've been living here for 17000 years!" comment on BBC Question Time, which was about a million years ago in internet time but who needs temporal relevance amirite? I might finish it tomorrow, I've been wandering around London a lot today shopping with Tim and I'm not in the mood to concentrate on properly structured writing. God, I missed writing properly structured things about archaeology/history, though. So much.

Oh yeah, I also started filling out my MA application! My personal statement is another thing I will probably write tomorrow.

PS: I say I was shopping with Tim, it was mostly Tim shopping, really. I only bought one thing. A pretty cool thing:




BFFs!

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I went to the European Bookshop yesterday, with my mum and a colleague of hers from school who were textbook shopping, and I got some books to read with my German class. :D

I can't decide which to do (or which to do first, since they're pretty short), though. One is Level 4: Stadt der Kinder, which I read when I was little and is about a bunch of kids mysteriously becoming characters in a videogame. The other one is the Nibelungen written in easy words, which is also awesome because a) mythology is always awesome, and b) the book comes with little info sections about medieval history, and quizzes about the content, and all sort of other stuff that makes my life easier. So maybe I'll do that one first.

I am still a little terrified by this surprise teaching gig. XD I'm glad it's half term next week so I have time to figure out what's going on. Also I'm getting another group of really tiny 1st grade German children, who I get to teach how to read and write and stuff like that. :O HOW AWESOME IS THAT GOING TO BE? I've always sort of wanted to teach someone to read and write.



Also, the European Bookshop is the best thing in the world. I want to go back there when I have money and buy everything.


PS: Probably going to the London Expo next weekend. :D I'm trying to find something useful like a schedule of events on their website, but no luck so far. >_>
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17. 10. 2009 12:59 am | Personal, Syndicated | Tags: , , | Comment
A little while ago, I made a resolution, to be more confident, to not put myself down by assuming I couldn't do things, and to throw myself in at the deep end more.

Granted, I made this resolution in the context of deciding on what difficulty level I should play BioShock on (which ended up being academic, since my computer overheats and freezes as soon as I get out of the elevator capsule thing and start enjoying the creepy atmosphere), but I think I can transfer it to teaching German classes to a handful of 13-year-old native speakers after school with absolutely no previous experience at all.

And next week, I'll have more than half a day's warning, so I'll have more of an idea what the fuck to do.



In other news, I've finally thought of something fun to do with tumblr. I often take pictures on my phone and then don't really have any idea of what to do with them. I cold spam twitter with them, but I'm not convinced pictures and twitter work that well together. I keep meaning to do an LJ picspam post with all of them, but I've not gotten around to it. So I had the idea yesterday that I could email them to tumblr straight from my phone whenever I take one. (Unless I find another/better site for mobile photo blogging.)

All that I have to do now is figure out a title.
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I drew a diary-type comic that was going to basically be half of this entry yesterday, but I just noticed my new drawing pad is bigger than my scanner, so that's not going to happen right now. It's ok, it wasn't that well-drawn anyway.

I went to London with Tim on Friday, mainly to get some revision material for the JLPT, since the revision course I'd signed up for was cancelled due to lack of interest. >_<



Read Real Japanese is a little bit above my level still, actually - lots of grammatical structures I've not come across before - but in a few months I can probably handle it.


I also watched a ridiculous documentary about Easter Island this weekend, with a full complement of stupid, notably: "'primitive' cultures are too dumb to invent stuff themselves", "aliens did it", and "Egypt is the source of all monumental architecture".

Before they mentioned aliens and I stopped paying as much serious attention, I got really irritated with some archaeologist they interviewed who was talking as if it's really weird and unusual and probably ~*mysterious*~ that people would want to build these huge apparently useless statues*. I know it was a documentary and they were trying to make it interesting, but that sort of attitude irritates me for so many reasons. Trying to smother genuinely interesting and intriguing things in pointless obfuscating mysticism, for one thing, and the suggestion that only "sophisticated" cultures are good enough to build monuments. And on a more basic level: Come on. Have you not ever looked around? Building big awesome impressive things is pretty much what we, humans, do here! I mean, by all means, be impressed that we manage it, I am constantly impressed and amazed by the crazy stuff we manage to do, but being surprised by the simple fact that we try is practically insulting.

... I may care too much about this sort of thing.



OH HEY, AND NOW I MUST BE OFF TO TEACH A SURPRISE GERMAN CLASS. Be back to explain later, if the 13-year olds don't eat me. O_O
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