First week of classes

As of Monday, March 31, I officially became a student here at Philipps Universität in Marburg. As of Tuesday, I am no able to ride the buses, trains, rickshaws, and other forms of public transportation, gratis and without fear of a 40 € fine (which as per the current rate, is approximately equal to 62 USD and 51 cents. *sigh*).

So now my first week of classes is over! Wait, what? But it's only thursday...? Welcome to the German System of Higher education. The average classes here meets once a week for about an hour and a half or so. So, if the student so desires, he or she may elect to take courses only on certain days, thereby leaving certain days completely free. I was one such student, and my current course schedule calls for a moderately strenuous Monday through Wednesday, followed by a 4 day weekend inclusive of days Thurs-Sun. I am admittedly quite pleased, as this will leave me plenty of opportunity to travel (as supplies last of course) without having to skip any classes.

This week my schedule was the following:
Montag Monday

• 9:15 - 10:45 Ausspracheübung und Lesen Pronunciation practice and reading
• 11:15 - 12:45 Einführung in das Althochdeutsche Introduction to Old High German
• 2:15 - 3:45 Einführung in die Linguistik des Deutschen 1 Introduction to German Linguistiks 1

Dienstag Tuesday

• 9:15 - 10:45 BCA German Literature Course
• 11:15 - 12:45 BCA Grammatik Grammar
• 2:15 - 3:45 Theoretische Konzepte des Fremdsprachenlernens theoretical concepts of foreign language learning

Mittwoch Wednesday

• 9:15 - 10:45 Einführung in die formale Semantik Introduction to Symbolic Semantics
• 7:30 - 10:30pm Fechten Fencing

Those of my college friends who are looking at those 8 courses and scratching their heads, saying "what, for petes sake, is Josiah taking 8 classes for?!" Well, I have an explanation. Over here, only certain courses translate to the American 3 credit system. Most of them are 2 credit courses.

That said, actually all of the ones I am taking, except for fencing, just happen to be 3 credits :P So yes, I attended 22 credits worth of classes this week! Woo hoo! Naturally, this means I will not actually be able to attend all of these classes, since I can only transfer 18 credits back to messiah. So I will have to stop going to one of the courses, because the preparatory Language course that I took during the month before University classes started will transfer back to Messiah as 4 credits. that will leave me with 20 credits, which although it is more than 18, is at least only a little bit more...I'm not sure how I am going to swing that, so you can all be praying that messiah lets me take extra classes free of charge.

A quick return to the actual classes though, namely Fechten.

I hope all of you Messiah College-ites are thoroughly jealous that I get to cover my last activity course not with badminton, softball, or even the ever-popular water Aerobics, but with Fencing. I know I am pretty much ecstatic. Alex Becker and I went for the first session last night, and it was very sweet. We learned the three main types of Fencing swords, or "Waffen," in German. They are as following:

Florett - Foil
Säbel - Saber
Degen - best definition is "rapier;" a little bit stockier than a Florett, but with generally the same style of fencing.

We also learned a little bit of history. If I understood correctly (I'll double check and correct errors later), back when people used to have duels, there were two main courses of conduct. The French would fence with real, sharp fencing swords, and each bit of blood drawn on the opponent was a point. The Germans on the other hand, must have thought that was too complicated, and simply held that the last one standing was the winner.

Thankfully, nowadays we have lots of cool electronic gadgets that tell you when you would have been bleeding if we were still back in the day.... :)