Last day of German Class

Today was the last day of my German course. It has been a very interesting 5 weeks. The first few days were very difficult for me, as the class already had its cliques set and someone was very mean to me the first day. But, within a week, several other new students and I had found our places.

My fellow students come from all over the world: Russia, Morocco, Cuba, the Philippines, Kazakhstan, Poland, the Dominican Republic, South Korea, Iran, Brazil, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Kosovo and Turkey, and I'm sure I've forgotten a few others. I was the lone American or native-English speaker.

We have all gotten along quite well, but I did have a few of those uncomfortable moments due to my nationality, which I expected. One day, we needed to write a quick paragraph about what we would show a visitor to our hometown. Hmmm, what to show someone in Atlanta, what in Atlanta was unique... Every city has a zoo, and an aquarium isn't that unique... After hearing some other people's paragraphs, with their centuries-old sites and famous places to see, I read my tongue-in-cheek paragraph about taking people to see those famous Atlanta landmarks: the Coca-Cola Museum, the CNN Center and I threw in Stone Mountain for good measure.

Then, a Cuban women read hers and it started with "I come from Guantanamo..." and I thought, "Oh, no." She talked about what there was to see and the teacher added, "But there is also a large prison there, isn't there? That would not be a very pretty place to go." I quickly found something interesting to stare in my book, but not before I saw about 5 heads swivel around to check out my reaction to that statement.

My Afghan friend was next to read his paragraph. It consisted of 2 sentences. "Ich komme aus Kandahar, Afghanistan. Alle is kaputt in Afghanistan." (Everything is "broken" in Afghanistan.) I again dropped my head as I saw several pairs of eyes look to me.

In spite of the potential for conflict, I have never been made to feel intentionally uncomfortable and no one has ever challenged me on U.S. policy. No one has ever snubbed me either. Everyone follows the unwritten rule that we are here to learn German, not play the blame game and there is no need to use this time to have disagreements about the horrible things going on in the world.

In fact, one of my classmates out of the blue told me during one of our break times that she loves, just loves America. I thought, "Why? Brad Pitt movies? Levi jeans? Fast food?" Here was her explanation: "I come from Kosovo and America saved my country. My uncle was killed during the war and everyday I had to hide in the basement during bombings. I love America." (For the record, there were more countries involved than the U.S., but I'll take the positives whenever I can).

There have been a lot of laughs during class and we even had a day when we pushed the tables back and one of the guys in class who works as a Latin dance instructor taught us the basics of the Cha-cha-cha.

On this our last day, we had class, took the final test and then had our "bring a dish from your homeland" feast. David and I had joked that I could always go through the McDonald's drive-through window for a bunch of Big Macs and Cokes, except the closest McDonald's doesn't have a drive-thru.

What to bring? I figured chili was pretty American and I could whip up yummy pumpkin whoopie pies with pumpkin puree I had bought at the commissary and froze. So, there it was. My classmates dug into my chili, kept piping hot in the crockpot, that holy grail from last fall. My whoopie pies were less of a success. "Gut, aber sehr süß!" "Good, but very sweet!" By European standards, they were much too sweet. Baked goods here are barely sweet at all.

The food was fantastic, even the dried fish pieces I tried from China were tasty, and we all went home with full stomachs.