Trier

I had the opportunity to go to Trier with the German classes this week. We took the youngest in the school. They are all about 11 years old. 11 year olds are still cute. One of my favorite moments of the trip was when the girls in the photo used wax from their cheese to make a Rudolph nose.

Trier is the oldest City in Germany, founded by Constantine in 16 BCC. When the Roman Empire was divided into East and West this charming city was the capital of Western Rome. We took a tour of Trier in French, and I am happy to say that I understood a good 90 percent of it.

The tour of Trier brought out a cultural difference between the students and I. I had my camera out, and I took pictures of everything old and everything pretty. My students couldn’t be bothered with such typical things. Not many of the students brought cameras, and the ones who did mostly took pictures of friends.

When the tour was over, everyone was free to explore for a couple of hours. After I ate and found some gifts at the Christmas Market, I went to the birth house of the notorious Karl Marx. It was fantasticJ I was so excited! I toured the house in German and I understood a most of it. I was so afraid that I had forgotten German. When I met with the class to go back to France I couldn’t speak French for a while because I had spent time thinking in German.

That is the way it is with me when I try to move between German and French. I can always understand, but speaking is a whole different monster. I’m in Germany for winter break now, and on the train ride there, I heard German and French all over the place. As a result I couldn’t speak either language very well. I feel really lost when this happens and nobody understands me. I hope that one day I will achieve a level of German and French that permits me to move fluidly between them. I would really like to add Spanish to that mix as well.