Wie bitte?

Ich bin in Deutschland und habe keine Idee wie Deutsch sprechen. Ich hoffe, dass ich sehr schnell lerne.

What'd they say? I saw their lips move and heard sounds exit, but I did not understand a thing... I'm pretty sure those are the words that just passed through your head. Well, welcome to my mind now.

Sitting on the tram, which is always on time and always clean, I hear sparse conversations echo throughout the aisles. Weird sounds reach my ears and I try to ignore them but a part of my mind goes to work--translating or even just trying to make out the separate words. I'm tired, I want to sleep in a bed with blankets. Snow falls outside the window, blurred by speed and finally a small tingle of electronic beeps sounds overhead, "Heeresbäckerei". My stop. The train slows down and I press the button to open the doors. Freezing wind scrapes my face, tiny daggers of snow start assaulting me as I trek to my room. Twenty minutes later, after I've cleaned myself and changed my clothes, I lie in bed. Sleep is far away because my mind is working on its own again. I translate thoughts into German, failing repeatedly whenever I reach a word that I don't know--seems to be the trend lately.

Every day I walk around Dresden, or in the Goethe Institute and hear wisps of German floating around me. Rarely do I understand even half of it. And each day I think, how the hell am I supposed to know enough for an actual university class? Then I understand--already, I am learning so much more than I ever did in a class. Being with people that force me to speak German and ask for vocabulary I don't know makes me learn. And right now, learning is fun :)