I set up a daily plan: German learning, violin playing, book reading, music class listening, travel planning, clothes washing and blog writing.

But today my plan was halted for two reasons: one, we went to play pull and table tennis this evening until nearly 7 o’clock. Two, I met my roommate again.

I actually met another group of exciting people today, students also from Rice. That immediately made me feel a sense of belonging. But the most exciting thing is to meet my roommate again.

I have met him only once, during my first day in Leipzig. And today we talked more. I learnt for the first time, and by surprise, that German teenagers also watch Japanese animation… and I recommended one to him. We exchanged food: I brought him some candy and cookies I brought with me from China, and he cooked some sausages. Also, naturally, wir haben viel Deutsch gesprochen. Tonight I did basically nothing but chatting, but it was good and fulfilling.

Reflection of the day: this seems stupid. But I think it is so true. That I am now learning language as a 4 year-old kid.

Why, a little kid and I are learning language in the same way: we observe other people and immitate what they say. We try to speak as much as possible as a practice. We are on almost the same language ability level, and we are both memorizing and learning more vocabulary and grammar. AND we constantly make mistakes.

The obstacle in learning a language is the fear of making mistakes. Obviously—at least I think—we may think the opportunity cost of making mistakes is very high: showing a lack of language ability in the public is embarrassing.

In the first week after arriving in Leipzig, I have been striving to overcome this obstacle. As I wrote in the last post, I need to be more “shameless” in the public, not afraid of making mistakes.

……………

Also, Essen heute!

Heute hatte ich für Frühstück Milch, ein Brötchen und manchmal Würste. Ganz gesund!

Mittagessen hatte ich nichts besonders. Nur zwei Brötchen und eine Viertel Pizza.

Und ich hatte eine Tasche Schwarzbier am Nachmittag.

eine Tasche Schwarzbier an der Thomaskirche

Und Abendessen… Ich hatte Pho! Es war sehr schön und billig! Folgenden ist eine Photo des Phos.

The best way to learn is by making mistakes. Yesterday evening I went to eat in an Italian restaurant but I was confused becaused no one take care of me after I entered the restaurant. Finally I decided to ask a person behind the counter where to order food, but when I began the conversation I suddenly forgot “order” in German.

And that was the embarrassing moment. I kept saying stuff that I momently made up and making hand gestures, but the person whom I was asking seems more confused than I was, probably because he could not understand me. In the end he asked me what I want, and I, who did not know what to say, said only, “food”. And that made things clear. He got me a waiter and the waiter led me to a seat.

Lessons learnt: 1.”bestellen” is the word for “order”; 2.In germany, most of the time nobody will wilcome you at the door of the restaurant. You have to find a seat yourself and then there will be someone to take care of you; 3. making mistakes is embarrassing, but is also fun.

With yesterday’s exerience, I set three clocks today. For breakfast I have sausage, break and milk in a small restaurant at Houptbahnhof. There seems to be milllions of sausages in Germany. I did not record the kind of sausage I ate in the morning, but I burried in mind afterwards that I need to make a record of everything German thing I eat, so that I will have an idea of how many German food have I eaten. A very important way to know more about the German food culture, isn’t?

In the morning we listened to the opening ceremony of this program, take a German test to devide us into different levels, and finally had a trip in city center. During the opening ceremony two university musicians played music of Bach. This week in Leipzig is Bach festival. There will be a lot of music going on in the city. Bach once served as a musician in a church in Leipzig for more than 20 years. His statue is also standing in front of the Thomaskirche, the second oldest church in Leipzig. I was also quite glad to konw that Leipzig is also the city where Felix Mendelssohn once lived. He is one of my favorite musician, and I have been playing his music for years! I hope there will be a concert playing exclusively Mendelssohn’s work.

Bachfest, outdoor performance

As for the test… some knowledge points were like goasts in my mind, when my brain wanted to catch them, they are like shadows and simply disappeared. Therefore, I saw a lot of stuff that I was sure I know them before but cannot remember at the time when I was doing the test. Which made me feel pretty bad.

I never had the chance to know my exact grade. I was assigned to one of the sessions without knowing wich level I was in. The entire class was composed of two groups of people: people from USA and from China (Somebody may say I am being racist. I do not mean it. Really.) And after the afternoon session I was a little bit tired. We were doing simple stuff, but because we are speaking and listening German all the time, my brain was dealing too much information and was a bit overloaded. This is going to be a very very full month.

After the session this afternoon all other students went back to their rooms. It seems. I stayed in the city center and spent the entire afternoon discovering the city center myself. We had a tour in the morning, but I think that was not enough. I went to a few shops and restaurants to eat. Yeah I love food. All of them were good, but… this was when I realized that my German was so poor. I first went to a shop called La Barrica after a long thought at the gate because I was not sure at all what was in the shop. I only knew that the shop sells wine and cheese, so at last I walked into the shop. There was nobody in the shop except for the shopowner, an old man and an old lady, all of them seemd to be a family. I spent a long time before the shopowner understood that I was coming for cheese and wine that he recommended. At last I had a cup of Clavidor wine from Spain and a piece of so called Leipzig cheese. Both were good for the first few bites/sips, but both seemed to much… after drinking the entire glass of wine I felt hot. During the eating time I tried to set up conversation with the only three people in the shop, but I soon discovered that what I could say or ask was to limited… And then I gave up the trial. After this experience I carefully take photos of nearly all the restaurant menus I encountered during my wandering. I will spend time studying these menus, so that I will know a lot better about German food culture.

afternoon tea with cheese and wine

For dinner I went to Nord See, a chain restaurant in Germany. Food was good. Menu was, as always, strange to me. I took photos of all the offerings at the restaurant for future study.

food @ Nord See

On my way back to my room I bought two bread and some sausage for tomorrow breafast. By the way, a student from Berlin lives in my suite. He goes to Leipzig University. The important thing is, he has bought all the kitchen facilities! And during our conversation yesterday night he authorized me the right to use his kitchen stuff. Oye! that means I can actually cook stuff during my time in Germany, experiencing of campus life for next semester early on.

That is a live acount for today… now. Before I came to Germany I thought that I need to have a goal sheet: what I want to accomplish in Germany. This goal sheet did not come out yet. Now, having look through the PPT of the trip predepart presentation, I think the following should be things that I need to accomplish in Germany:

1. improve German skills to an entirly new level.

2. accumulate questions formed during everyday’s freetime and ask them the next day.

3. learn about German food culture. Eat in one new restaurant every day, study it’s menu, ask questions.

4. get familiar with the transportation system in Germany.

5. Make friends.

6. get familiar with the special things that the city I want to visit can offer. Bach and Mendelssohn in Leipzig, for example.

7. to continue with 6, get familiar with what a typical German lives every day: what do they eat, what are their timetables, what do they do during freetime, what are their courtesy, etc.

To sum up, the goal is: to develop intercultural competence.

a street scene in city center Leipzig

Statue of Bach outside Church of St. Thomas

The trip to Germany is not that bad: transfer in Frankfurt airport, fly to Leipzig, wait in the airport for 10 hours—the worst part of the trip, actually, since I have not booked a hotel for that night in order to save money—and then, after walking in the wrong direction for three consecutive times, get the necessary information, get my room keys and arrive at my room, a very nice and big (at least twice as large as my room at Rice).

First impression in Leipzig: people here do not speak English a lot. And that is a problem, or challenge, a more positive way to call it. I have tried to communicate with people in English, but it is difficult. It seems that people here speak English as much as I speak German. That was when I decided to speak German dominately, even it seemed difficult.

The worst time of the day happened in the afternoon. I was supposed to arrive at a plaza at 6:45 pm for a welcome party. I set my clock at 5:30 pm, and went to sleep at 3:30, feeling that I could certainly be on time for the party. I needed sleep because I haven’t really slept for 26 hours—since I got on the plane from Beijing to Franfurt. And what happened next was that—I overslept. I haven’t heard the clock at all. When I waked up, I saw that the sky was turning a little bit dark, and I immediately thought that I have overslept because the sky around 6 pm is still bright and shining.

So then I took a shower and will go to bed again. I need much rest. Today is exciting, tiring, and a bit of unfortunate day. Chinese people believe that luck is conservative. We call it 人品守恒, which basically means that bad luck today will turn into good luck in the future. I believe that tomorrow I will have better luck.