It's only Tuesday and already I'm exhausted for the week from learning Polish. The worst is the tapes: they jabber on at top speed and EVEN IF I get a couple words here and there, it's not sufficient knowledge to answer a whole long list of T-F questions. (If I can understand what the questions are even asking: a different but equally pressing problem.)
Sat at lunch with a French guy; he was so excited that I knew a little French that we tried to speak for a little while. My vocabulary is mostly all there, but it takes a while to "rebuild" for conversation. Unlike last summer, I haven't really been hearing French and German amongst my colleagues. I enjoyed meeting Europeans last summer, but it turned out to be a bit of a distraction from the main purpose, in retrospect.
There were also some heritage speakers at lunch - who speak fluently but are in a lower class level than mine. What gives? They apparently can't read or write at all, have no idea about grammar.
Meanwhile - I have an hour to do some handwash (the laundry is apparently a disaster) and make some new flash cards for today's facial vocabulary. We'll be describing people for sure tomorrow: short neck, brown eyes, long hair. Today we had to have a debate about the veracity of TV news. Since we're all such overachievers, people had looked up new vocabulary so that they could express themselves. Good for them: but unfortunately the rest of us don't understand when we venture outside the common vocabulary.
Posted by otto0114 at July 11, 2006 06:19 AM