What is Family?

Many questions arise when your education and learning is concerned. For me the most important one is “What is family?” This is the end of the first month of my education. These are the other students I spent my time with everyday for a month, and this is the lovely teacher who challenged us, not only on a day to day basis, but even an hour to hour basis. Never giving us a chance to become complacent and/or lazy. She knew the potential of everyone in the classroom and yet she still found a way to challenge everyone to their fullest capacity. I consider her to be like a mother. One who carefully guided and nurtured each and every one of us in our lessons. The men on each of the ends and in the middle were like brothers to me. We were always cracking jokes and keep the tension low. I’d like to think we became the class entertainment, but we could not have performed at our best without the ladies, of course. They always kept us on our toes. If the guys ever won a game against the girls (which was not often) it was definitely hard fought. We were always constantly helping each other with understanding the curriculum. We were a family of shared knowledge. If one person knew the correct answer, we would guide the others to the right answer, not just simply give the answer. This is how we kept everyone accountable for their German Language learning experience. We used competition as one of the means to better our education. We would spend nights studying, to come the following day with an enhanced vocabulary, so we could display our talents within the games we played. Many times it ended with one team barely crawling by with a victory, and that is one of the things I loved. Competition does not have to be simply about winning or losing. It can become an instrument for challenging each and every student within a classroom. I’m very happy with my first 4 weeks of Intensive learning. I feel we as a class took hold of our learning experience. First by learning the Material, Next by practicing with each other, and later actually using the skills we acquired with the locals in Frankfurt. I can definitely say on the first day of the course, I thought my time here was going to be a cake walk. The second day woke me up and I quickly sprung to action. We as a class could have folded, we could have complained (we did a little of that honestly), we could have remained confused and lost. This however was not an option for us. Not one of us came for fun. The majority of my classmates were either married or had a partner who spoke fluent German, so their motivation came from the desire to speak with their significant others. Some others wanted to pursue a professional career. I was the only person who was not either married or living with my partner. My motivation came from my simple love for the German language, people, culture, and lifestyle. I also want to pursue my career of becoming a translator. German being one of the few I wish to learn at the moment. Since the last time I was here, a huge part of me was missing. Now just because I am back on German soil does not imply my journey has ended. In fact, it is only beginning. First month down, and there is more to come. Stay tuned folks.