I got back to the UK on Saturday evening, following my week in Cirencester‘s twin town of Itzehoe, in Northern Germany.
Its nice to not need gloves, hats, scarves or several jumpers now – it was extremely cold in Itzehoe and is much warmer here!
It was quite hard to have to speak German all the time – I didn’t need to do that last time I went, because our group were in the youth hostel and weren’t around the German language all the time. However I think my German has improved.
I’ve learnt a few of the more colloquial terms – such as “Achja” and “Achso” as well as others. Towards the end of the week, I found that I’d started abbreviating/shortening words like the Germans do – turning “Ich habe…” into “Ich hab’…” (etc). It’ll be interesting to see the difference between those that stayed in college and those that went to Germany, once we return to lessons after half term.
News of our visit even reached the local newspaper, the Schleswig-Holsteiner Zeitungsverlag, in an article published following our visit to the town hall!
Next thing I need to do, is write a report about the week and e-mail it into my German teacher this week. There is an open evening at college next week and they would like to get our reports (in English) on display as soon as possible.
You might like to see the brand new German section of my website – I’ve completely re-written it and aim to keep it more up to date than I have previously done. Go to fred-hart.co.uk/inhalt.
Bye for now!
