So here I am in Dresden, sitting in my room where I have an awesome 75Mbps internet connection. Has really made uploading my photos a hell of a lot easier. What was before a potentially 1-2 hour job is now like 1-2 mins. There's a church not far from where I'm staying. At 7am and 6pm every day it rings its bell for about 5 minutes straight. Lucky I need to be up at 7am for my class anyway...

I almost had a bit of trouble getting here when I was told that all the busses for the day were booked. Turns out though that just hanging around and asking the driver if there was a spot was good enough. Turns out there were like 20 spots, though I think paying the driver directly might have cost me twice as much as otherwise, though this was still half the price of the train.

The first day at the Goethe Institut was a little embarrassing. Turns out that the language and culture class I signed up for doesn't actually have varying levels, but is just designed for people rather proficient in German already. Way above my level.

In the end I was put in one of the beginners classes which means I'm probably not actually going to learn a whole lot of new stuff, but it does have a far greater emphasis on speaking, so perhaps I can combine what I already know in theory and get more proficient in actually speaking the language. To be honest I think I like it this way. It has removed a lot of stress and the first class was actually quite fun. There was only one other person in the class who was a native English speaker, a guy from Scotland, but pretty much everyone else spoke fluent English anyway.

Without having to focus too much on really learning the German I was more easily able to just talk with people and get to know them while practicing my German. Perhaps not really was I was planning on getting out of the course when I first signed up to it, but I think I think it has worked out ok.