der/das/die Facebook

I am so disappointed. I was going to listen to some Deutsche metal, but I figured looking at Facebook in Deutsche would be so much cooler. I thought that it would change everything everyone was saying into German, like the terrible Google translations. There was a pretty rad argument going on between like zwolf people on someone's status about their favorite teacher getting suspended for racist comments. Apparently a student reported him to the administration and now he was being harassed on Facebook for what he did. I came to his aid and tried to say how it was foolish to blame him for reporting something he felt was against the rules, but really it was because I like to start arguments. It devolved into like a 200 comment battle royale ending in people posting videos of cats driving or DJ'ing. It would have been so sweet to see the whole argument in German, but alas it was not to be.

I did end up learning some cool words in German, though it was kind of obnoxious trying to find the "Like" button without the little thumbs up symbol to guide me. Some of the words I learned are:

Startseite - Home

Kommentieren - Comment

Gefallt mir - Like (this?)

Teilen - Share

Status aktualisieren - Update status

Sprache - Language (I didn't realize that language was so close to speak, it makes sense though)

There were also a lot of those English/German crossover words that we talked about in class. Such as:

Profil - Profile

Foto - Photo

Status - Status

It is a good thing old people don't know how to use Facebook... or computers. They'd be so upset.

The last thing I learned is that pokes can be even more annoying when put into German. Mostly because poke in German is "hat dich angestupst." I believe it translates into "you have a poke" or something like that. Next time I'll listen to some German metal and try to analyze the lyrics.

Skype und mein Deutsch Freund!

Prologue:

On the summer of 2009, I went to a German concert at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp. Of course seeing students from a different country interested me a lot. What I didn't know is that my grandparents were being host parents for one of them. I took the opportunity to know her, and I sure was lucky to do so.

Sie heißt Elena Henes, und sie ist wunderbar. Although she lives in Germany, I still keep contact with her via Facebook and Skype.

My Activity:

Before college, it has been my goal to learn German so that I can visit my friends in Germany, so now that I'm in college, I Skype Elena frequently and chat about my class.

On 9/26 at neun Uhr um nacht, I chatted with her in as much German that I can spill out for like 2 hours. I missed her so much and we chatted about all the phrases I learned like "How are you feeling?" and "How old are you?" She also taught me some funny phrases that I probably wouldn't say in class. :D

She plans on visiting me this new year's eve. Can't wait for that! She's in DC for an au pair program so she is relatively closer. From outside of the class, she also teaches me about her schooling in Germany and how different it is from high school/college. For instance, they start high school with an interest (major is similar). But aside from informational conversations we do converse informally, like most college students would.

Overall, I'm glad that I have the opportunity to be connected with German friends and I'm glad that I'm taking German because I think it would be fun to talk to my friends in German. It does take time though. :(

Tschüss,

Jonathon Parker

Watching South Park

For my first AMD assignment Ich decided to watch der Fernseher. I watches zwei episodes of South Park and was able to follow the main plot. A lot of the vocabulary confused me and I found viel of the details hard to verstehen. South Park is always funnny und ich had a gut time watching the two episodes. One was about a band and a ein Junge named Timmy, and the other episode was about Hell. If ic continued to watch episodes of south park in Deutsch ich could pick up some more vocab and become better adjusted to the rapid pace at which the dialogue runs. Deutsch really isn't very different than Engisch but ich do wonder if wir sprechen as quickly. Next time I watch something in Deutsch I'm going to use subtitles so new vocab is even easier to learn. Overall ich had fun working on my first AMD blog and look forward to picking up more Deutsch as time goes on.

I learned these words:
everyone: Alle
elementary school: Grundschule
Doctor: Doktor
Drugs: Drogen
Skiing: Skifahren