Seventh Dutch Day

I think that today was the day of the not-great speakers. We had Matt, an Englishman, and Etus, a woman from Hungary. Apparently the readings are getting more and more difficult. I know that the vocabulary is really building up. Each day is between twenty and thirty new words from the text and then ten new verbs. So you have to know the definitions of all the words, but then you have to conjugate the verbs.

Today we also did a little dication exercise. One person was at the board as Evaline said the sentence slowly and the rest of up wrote on a paper. Then we discussed. I am very happy to say that I was the first person to get up and get his sentence completely correct - complete with a difficult to conjugate verb (landde - from landen) and a word that most people didn't know - vliegtuig, or airplane. I also told people that they should take advantage of the free hour with Marten or Evaline.

Matt spoke with a heavy English accent and basically read his little ditty about his trip to Cambodia. Initially he drew Thialand, Cambodia and Vietnam poorly so that it looked like a dick and balls. Fortunately, he broke it up and labeled it so it took that image away. He never got the giggling. It was a very stiff presentation speckled with English. But, always up to the challenge, I asked a question or two.

Etus always speaks softly in Dutch. I sat one day with her at the break and she said she'd forced her employer to pay for this class. "Why do I want to pay to learn this language? I'm not going to stay here forever." Nice attitude. She talked about something, but I didn't know what she was talking about until about three minutes into her presentation. It was Hungary. It was completely stale. She's a sweet girl, but no one I would want to work with or have much contact with.

Today we also got into reflexive and seperable verbs. I think this is where it's going to really get going. Up to now it's been a lot of review plus some stuff. Reflexive verbs are totally new. I'll have to do my homework really well today.

Saw Ladykillers last night. Very good. A fun movie. I recommend - especially if you can get free passes as I did from school.