More houseguests! oh yeah, and school.

Stefan's brother, Frank, came up to visit this past weekend. He lives in Kochel-am-See which is about an hour south of Munich and 15 miles north of the Austrian border - REALLY pretty area, click here for pictures. He stayed with Stefan's mom down in Giessen, but we all spent a lot of time visiting. Friday night we went to a movie theater in Giessen and all watched Ratatouille - that was great! I just really wish I could've seen it in English first...ha. I understood most of it, but I KNOW I just don't get the jokes as much - and I sit there knowing that the animae was done based on it's english-language jokes/script...ah well, good ubungen for me! Frank, Antje, and Ronje all came up for a big lunch on Saturday - I made one of Stefan's favorite stews (cinnamon pork with sweet potatoes) and a pear-blueberry cobbler - yum!

So class continues on....I would say it drags, but there are a few lively ones in there that keep you awake - ha. Not that they look too awake in this picture, but here are 2 of the au pairs that are in my class - Ulla (really Ursula on the left) and Anagol (pronounced anna-ghoul). They are both 19 and make me feel like I'm sitting in a high school class. (for better or for worse ; ) Ulla is from Poland and Anagol is from Uzbekistan.

In my latest edition of German class (level 4) we have: 1 from Tajikistan, 1 from Uzbekistan, 2 from Kyrgyzstan, 1 from Kazakhstan, 2 from Poland, 1 from Afghanistan, 1 from Nicaragua, 1 from Brazil, 1 from Columbia, 2 from France (including a guy named Pierre, i kid you not), 1 from Siberia, 1 from Russia, 2 from China, 1 from Japan, and 1 from the USA (me). There are 2 who I don't know where they are from. I think also from a 'stan' of some sort.

So yeah, if I want to talk to my classmates, it's gotta be in German. Only Pierre from France knows English, mainly because he's writing his Master's thesis in English while he's here (he followed his German girlfriend here after they met in England doing studies--they only speak French to each other, but he feels he should learn her language too). Tarik from Morocco married a German girl and he speaks a little English, but mainly French and Arabic. It makes for an interesting group - in more ways than one!

Today we watched a video about the fall of the Berlin Wall and interviews from some eastern Germans who talked about the horrible way of life in the DDR times and how happy they were to be in west Germany now. It was actually really sad. It was pretty interesting watching some of the faces of the older women in the class - those from other Russian states, Poland, etc. I could see it made them pretty emotional. Just another example of how awful communism and totalitarian regimes are - and how the socio and psychological fall-out of those things takes generations to clear up.