Svenskay's Blog

(Un)familiar territory January 22, 2010

The new term has begun and already I have fallen behind with my blog by some two weeks. The main reason for this, aside from my inherent laziness, is the sheer amount of work that I now have to complete each night.

The first ‘proper’ day was Tuesday 12th – I chose to sit near the two people with whom I had shared a class with the previous term and tried to blend in as best as I could. The teacher, who seems nice enough, then immediately split us up from our groups and sat us with new people. We played a basic game where you roll a die then move a token and answer a question depending on which space you land on. At this stage it didn’t seem too difficult. It was a noticeable step up in ability but there were only a few thing that I was unable to understand. The people in my group, one girl in particular, seemed to be very competent at speaking Swedish and the beginning of the feeling that I was out of my depth began.

After stumbling through the game, we were given a piece of text on the recent snowy weather across Europe. It was at this point that I felt REALLY out of place. I could barely read a single sentence without wondering what it meant. After I came home that evening I tried as best I could to interpret the text and, in the process, annoyed my girlfriend… She has lots of work (even more than me) and yet she still helps when I ask – When I’m finally able to speak Swedish I’ll have to get her a big thank you present for putting up with me. Anyway, I was having serious doubts about whether I was in the right class and whether I should ask to be moved down to something a little easier.

Over the next few days I asked the two people that had moved to this class with me from the beginners whether they found it difficult. Thankfully they agreed that this was a VERY big step up. I think my choice quote would be: “Before term we spent two weeks learning the words ‘banana’ and ‘apple’ and now the expect us to do this?”. I decided to persevere and hope for the best…