Current Music: Marco Borsato – “Hart van een winnaar”

School, school, school… I’ve decided I like the syntax teacher better than the phonology one. Not because he’s American, but just because he’s friendly, you know? Or maybe it’s just because I like syntax better – it makes more sense, rather than just memorizing a bunch of symbols. Oh well, anyway, it’s going well. We were diagramming sentences today, which I was really good at back in G-ville, and anyway, I like it – it’s like putting a puzzle together. This guy’s method is a little different – or maybe Tomomi just let us do it the easy way – but I like it nonetheless. He gave us an ambiguous sentence (I had actually had the exact same sentence before, ‘The girl looked at the man with the telescope’… see how there are two meanings?) and had us diagram both possible ways it could be interpreted. And it was so funny to hear everyone around me discussing it in Dutch! None of us could keep straight which ‘tree’ was which. “Deze is ‘het meisje dat met de telescoop naar de man kijkt’.” “Nee, die is ‘ze kijkt naar de man die de telescoop heeft’.” “Niet!” “Wel! Kijk…” and on and on. It was great fun. But I still don’t know if my professor can speak Dutch or not. You’d think so, but he speaks English just like I do and I have yet to hear him speak any Dutch… and the students ask him one-on-one questions in English instead of Dutch the way they do with the other guy… so who knows?

I’m not liking Boswell quite as much as I did at first. Apparently, being in C-level means we only get to do boring things as examples. Scott’s book has fun things like songs, but ours is supposed to be more difficult Dutch, which you apparently find only in less interesting stuff like newspapers. Today we were watching TV about Prinsjesdag (day where the official decisions about money and the economy of the country and all are announced), reading an article about a space wedding (OK, that one was okay), and listening to a radio program about adult education. That last one especially was just soooo dull. When I’m listening to something boring, it makes me not care as much about understanding, thus I don’t try as hard. Plus I don’t think my teacher really likes me. (She thought I was speaking English in class today, but I wasn’t, it was the American woman next to me whose Dutch is so bad, but I don’t think she believed me.) Hopefully the other one will be a little better. We’ll have her on Friday.

Definitely time for some food now. Oh, but one last thing: my Net is still broken, so if you want to talk to me, it’s MSN or nothing. Or snail mail, of course. (Mom, your postcard arrived today – thanks!)

Seeya later!