Day Five of class

Class continues. Today we had two people present. Polina from Russia and Hiro from Japan. I am really enjoying the presetations. Most people talk about their country of origin. I sort of felt like that would be not a great idea in my case because I, wrongly, assumed that people know about America. I don't want to be one of those that assumes that people WANT to know, so I turned into one who assumes everyone DOES know. Whatever.

Jul, one of the French folks, asked me if anyone actually lived in Manhattan. So obviously not everyone understands how things work in NYC, which gets a huge amount of air time in the movies and, possibly the press. So it follows that there are many misconceptions about Texas and the rest. Next time, I guess.

Polina is a paper white waify little thing from Russia, in her mid-20's. I had a bit of a resentment against her because not only is she apparently picking up Dutch quickly, she speaks with very little accent when she speaks English. This is from a year spent in an American high school. She talked about Russia, Moscow and popular misconceptions. She reads better than she speaks, but she really does seem to have an ear for the language, and languages in general.

Hiro is about 50 and from Japan. He seems very into the whole language learning thing, but he doesn't speak very clearly. He talked a lot about Japan. It was interesting and I enjoyed it. Like with all the rest, I try to ask questions. Sometimes I have a question in my head and it's perfectly set up, grammatically, and then when I try to say it and I just trip all over myself.

I'm understanding more and more. Today we had another teacher take half the class. Marten is in his 40's, very nice and apparently is going to offer times for people who want to speak with him. I think my bein able to speak is going to be pivital in my being able to land a job. I'll take all the help he'll offer. So much homework every night. I have some dreams with new Dutch words in them. So strange and intense.