East / West and I become a dirty old woman

I’ve been in my German class four days a week since February, and it’s all kinds of interesting.  I took German in high school and college, but taking German to communicate in an actual German speaking country is completely different.  For instance, when you take German in college, your professor expects you to know things.  She expects you actually to remember what nouns are masculine, feminine, and neuter, as well as what parts of the sentence are nominative, accusative, and dative.  She tests you on these things.     

Alternatively, in German to communicate in actual Germany class, the teacher stood in front of the class the first day and said, “Only people who learn German as small children can truly master the genders of nouns and the nominative, accusative, and dative.  Over time you will make fewer and fewer mistakes, and that is all you can hope for.”  Whew!  What a load off.  Also, there are no tests in German to communicate in actual Germany.  If you show up 70% of the time, you can go on to the next level class. 

 On Monday and Tuesday, we have a teacher who is around 55 years old and grew up in the former East Germany.  She has an outstandingly beautiful quaff of salt and pepper hair and a figure that would be the envy of any 16 year old cheerleader, and she bounces around the classroom, joking, and laughing, and drawing pictures on the chalk board so that we know what she’s talking about.  She then switches into bonkers East German woman mode and says she’s an atheist and that Nietzsche was right, that God is dead, and then she talks about some book by Karl Marx’s son in law or her boyfriend’s spine surgery or how she thinks being cheerful is idiotic or something.  Then, she switches right back into her normal delightful self.

The Wednesday and Thursday teacher is a young woman around my age who grew up in the town where we all now live, securely in the former West Germany.  She is also fun and cheerful, and then she tells us that the former East Germany is a wasteland, and that anybody with any sense at all leaves, and that they have a growing xenophobia problem, and that they have some assholes who harassed some Turkish restaurant owners.  Then she goes home to her boyfriend, whom she promises never to marry because marriage is not her thing, and eats a vegetarian meal before picking out her dress for the Lutheran church service on Sunday.  She is tremendously likable, except for the fact that she doesn’t really seem to shower enough – or at least not enough considering that she commutes to class on a bike.

I also have a delightful classmate from a very sadly wore torn country who is a professional body builder.  This is particularly fantastic, since he’s about 5 feet 4 inches tall and has four daughters under the age of seven who demand princess parties at all times and gave him flowers and homemade cupcakes for his birthday last week.  He has shown us all competition photographs of himself fully waxed and in a speedo.  I fear he may have a muscle growth enabled brain tumor pushing on the 'be extraordinarily cheerful all the time' part of his brain.

I also thoroughly enjoy the company of the Chinese woman who sits to the right of me, and the Filipino woman who sits to the left of me.  They are both excellent cooks and insist of feeding the class at every class break.  Good people to know.  Then they talk about how they both love to eat chicken feet, and everybody is totally lost.

Unfortunately, I learned that the ridiculously good looking gay hairdresser from Spain is only 21 years old.  He was born in 1991.  You guys, I am such a pervert.