Today was our last day of the A1.1 course. To finish our last day off we started by revising a few things from the past 4 weeks and then we had a bit of a food party! Everyone brought in something to share, all in all it was a lot of fun.

Overall I am really satisfied with this course and I am really happy with the progress so far. The teacher is very clear with her explanation and the workbooks are easy to understand. Next month I will be joining the A1.2 course and looking forward to the first class!

I cannot believe it is already the 4^th week! The course has gone so fast, but I loved it so much that I’m continuing to the A1.2 course for November.

Here comes another confusing topic for me…

Trennbare Verben which means separable verbs such as anhalten (an – halten), abfahren (ab – fahren). Another example is ein+steigen= Ich steige ein.

Then we had to move onto Trennbare Verben bei Fragen. Apparently some people pick up this topic quickly but for me it’s a little slow. I was talking to another student in my class, it’s interesting that German and English share many similarities but the order which you put the words to create a phrase doesn’t translate correctly in English so sometimes you just have to forget English so that you don’t compare the language.

Today was the day where we had class in a café and I really enjoyed being somewhere out of the class room.

I ordered an apple with carrot juice. Of course the others ordered coffee expect for my partner which I had for the activities. We zoomed through our worksheets together, we ended up finishing early so we also left a little bit early!

I would definitely say Melbourne has some of the best cafes and this place was pretty good, but I gotta day I really do love the ones in Melbourne. The atmosphere was nice with lots of people working but was surprised that I saw someone casually buy cigarettes over the counter of the café. Guess that’s just how Europe works.

I hope we have another opportunity to go out and work in a café again soon in the future!

Today we began practicing phrases that we may use when we are out at cafes or restaurants.

We went into groups to practice a restaurant scenario, one of us as the waiter and the rest as customers.

We also went around the class to explain traditional meals from our countries. For me New Zealand and Australia share a lot of similarities like meat pies, fish and chips and a good old barbecue. Japan however have better… (in my opinion) like gyoza, ramen, sushi, bento box, yakitori, takoyaki and the list goes on forever!

Tomorrow we are all going to a café and doing our Deutsch class because it’s a public holiday. So everything we’ve practiced will come into use.

My favourite topic…food! I was so happy we finally got into the food part of our Deutsch Kursbuch. It’s so much fun and easier to remember because I can relate to it a lot.

We went through the class to talk about what we have for Frühstück (breakfast) and also what our favourite foods are and of course all in German. When it was my turn I had no favourite because I can’t pick.

This Friday is a public holiday but we have a class to make up for next Thursday’s class so we are all going to a café to practice ordering food and drinks in German… it’s going to be a great lesson!

Happy 10^th blog post! Thanks for the people who are reading my blog posts, I hope they are interesting enough for you.

Today was the start to a new week and Deutsch class and it was very good once again. I really enjoy learning in a classroom full of people. We began learning ‘Was magst du?‘ and understanding the differences from Nie all the way through to oft. And of course all the in-betweens like manchmal.

Today wasn’t a great day for me as knee pain was frustrating so I went to the doctor again. The day felt so long and unsettling going from one doctor to the other. I will be getting and MRI scan this week.

Something that made me smile was when I was walking home after Deutsch class I looked up at the Opera house and realised there was no more construction work on it! (Only for now of course.) But I was so excited because I hadn’t seen the opera like this yet and it made me so happy. This is when I realised you should be grateful for all the small things in life.

It’s becoming to get cold here in Vienna and I’m definitely not a fan. Had some nice sunny weather when I first arrived but I left from an Australian winter and now so quickly I’m back to a European winter. Today I definitely over dressed, looks like I’m in the snowy alps in minus 5 degrees.

Today we learnt about the time. At first it’s hard to get used to but now I’m definitely getting the hang of it. I don’t understand why in Austria if it’s 5:15 they say Viertel 6. They are saying it’s 6:15 when really it’s 5:15. I find that very strange.

As a dancer, there are many responsibilities for self care. To keep your body healthy, fit and strong. From last week I began to have knee pain which started to improve until today where my knee suddenly collapsed and clicked out again. This can get so frustrating as I cannot hardly walk today and all I want is to better and be able to join my dance classes again. But with these things comes patience.

While I can’t move I can continue to learn these new Grammatik rules, Nominativ und Akkusativ. We just began this topic and it is very confusing as there is no such thing in English.

This is where is starts to get a little confusing…

My brain is very slow to comprehend new rules in Grammar (as I have realised) and so understanding that each word has a different ending in its case of being ‘plural’ and also a new article gets put on at the start, tells me I need to do some practice. Even after practicing for 2 minutes with the class it started to become easier.  Such as der Ball (singular) turns to die Bälle. But each word falls into its own category. For example, foreign words or words that end in A E I O U, that need to be changed to plural gets a ‘s’ on the end eg. Das Foto – die Fotos, das Taxi — die Taxis.

Last night we were given a little bit of homework on colours. I quite enjoyed it actually.

Today we began learning putting in words with the correct matching word.

Such as:

Kein Buch

Keine Kette

And more and more…

This is where is becomes very confusing for me as each word uses a different word with a different ending. Eg. Kein/Keine, ein/eine. The best way to get this rule in our brains is to just practice it in our everyday lives. We also began learning names of common furniture and objects. I have lots of revision to do now!

Now I have been living in Vienna for a bit over a month. I’m loving it a lot and surprisingly last year the winner of worlds most liveable city was Melbourne, and this year it was Vienna! So I’m very lucky to have been able to live in both.

I love the Melbourne’s vibe and atmosphere but Melbourne could learn a lot from Vienna. I am very impressed with Vienna’s public transport system. Always on time and on schedule. Melbourne is not so good with the public transport. I guess something I miss a lot about Melbourne is I was only 10 minutes away from the beach. In Vienna of course there are no oceans surrounding it but nothing can beat the Donau River!

Also, Australia is a much younger country than Austria and what I love about Vienna is that they have a wonderful rich History.