Today was our last class of the level, we were sad to leave our teacher but many of us will continue next level, so is nice to see that you will continue to the next step studying German with the good friends that you have made in the DeutschAkademie.

I have analyzed how better is my German comparing when I started the course, I still have to continue working on it, but from the day that I started the lessons it is much better, I have gained confidence with the speaking also I can see that my writing, reading, and listening is improving, I can see it in my daily activities when I use more and more German than English, or even when I can say an idea the first word that came to my mind is in German.

Thanks to my teacher that each day encouraged us to learn more vocabulary and to speak, for that reason the last advice that she gave us when we left the room was never forget to speak and speak.

As I have written many times before is important to experiment the culture where you are living, but Munich as many other cities in Germany also offers a variety of other cultures due to the big amount of international people that live here.

Therefore, the cities offer a wide choice of events to attend, you can check many of them on Facebook. Last week in Munich was an event to live the Seville Feria, is not the same like in Spain but it brings a small version of it where you can also meet people that share your interests.

Also, this week is the last week of the Frühlingsfest, according to many Germans a small version of the Oktoberfest, due to October is still far, with my classmates of the DeutschAkademie, we are planning to also go to this important Fest in Munich to continue knowing this culture.

Today as each month in the DeutschAkademie my teacher prepared an excursion. For each level, the teachers prepare something like this, in my last two courses we went to a brunch and the next one we went to the English Garden. This time my teacher collected different ideas and my classmates and I had the option to choose between going to the cinema to watch a movie in German, go to a museum or going to an exhibition. We chose the last one due to we could interact more among ourselves and speak more German.

And I can say that it was a great experience. The exhibition was about the famous German photographer Peter Lindbergh, he has been the photographer for important magazines such as Vogue. I can say that it was a different experience where we could practice our German at the same time that we enjoy a presentation of art and also and the most important we had a lot of fun.

In the conversation club, we are a mixed of levels from A2.2 to B1.2. Some people could think that the communication could be difficult due to the participation of people of different levels but thanks to the teacher the conversation tend to be more fluent, due to he solves our doubts and teach us new expressions.

In the second class of the conversation club, we talked more about our home countries, so I learned a little bit about Turkey, Ukraine, Vietnam and Estonia. At the same time, my teacher taught us some facts about basic geography in Germany to identify the main cities and regions in the country.

Something that I have experienced on my own with a friend is traveling along Bayern using the regional ticket, is the cheapest way to travel and makes easier the visit to places near to the cities where you are living at least it works for each region in Germany, in my case “the Bayern Ticket” that is valid for one day to take all regional trains in Bayern also for S-Bahn and buses of the places that are you visiting. So it is a good way to know the country by regions.

Today we learned the connectors in German: obwohl, dass, sodass, deshalb, trotzdem, dann, weil. It is difficult to keep fresh all the grammar that we have learned, for that reason to make our learning easier our teacher gave us at the beginning of the course some posters where the DeutschAkademie summarizes all the important grammar with the most common verbs used in the infinitive, perfect and präteritum form, also prepositions and a guide to used Nominativ, Akkusativ, Dativ or Genitive to never forget them. At the same time, she recommended as to bring it with us to the lessons every day.

Also, there are multiple exercises on the DeutschAkademie website to practice the grammar or you can just download the app on your cell phone. So as you can see the DeutschAkademie offers different tools to practice, in the same way, there are many other apps that you can download, to learn new vocabulary or to practice grammar.

At the end you have many resources to practice, you can choose what is the best one for you, at least I have a new challenge for myself learn a new song every week, it helps me to memorize vocabulary and improve my pronunciation while I share my passion for music so you just need to be creative to learn a new language, therefore be creative to study German.

One of the big questions between my classmates and me is now that we have learned a lot of grammar in the lessons, how to continue the exposure to the German and interact with the language more hours during the day apart the 3 hours of the intensive course? Sometimes it results difficult because we tend to switch the German to English or our mother tongue in our daily tasks.

Is for that reason that the DeutschAkademie offer some activities of integration to interact with more people that attend the courses and practice German, it is an activity that they organize each month, a perfect opportunity to meet new people that as you, are learning the language and practice with them.

Aside from that, there are also other meetings that other people from Munich offer to meet also international people and practice German, last week my classmates and I joined to one of these meetings in a karaoke bar, was a good chance to practice while we were singing.

Living in Germany not only implies knowing the language. It is also important to know the culture, it makes part of the adaptation process, that is not easy, especially when you come in winter and you can’t understand a word of the people on the street.

But there is a huge variety of places that you can visit in Munich to learn about the German culture. There are numerous museums to visit, like the Pinakothek. Each Sunday the entrance cost is 1 EUR or the Deutsches Museum for those lovers of technology.

There are also other places like the Nymphenburg Palace, that was the summer residence of the Bavarian monarchs, or just the Marienplatz and the beautiful Rathaus, my favorite place in this city, you don’t have to be an expert of architecture to admire the city center of Munich. On the other hand to those football lovers, there is the Allianz arena stadium or the Olympia Park where this spring and summer it offers an exhibition of “Street art”. Also, there are good bars for those that enjoy dancing Latin music, I go as often as I can, I can’t avoid that part of my Colombian culture. As you can see there are many options according to your preferences, for all of those reasons, I love Munich.

I have chosen the DeutschAkademie among other institutes, first, because of many people recommend it to me, also the prices are reasonable, and a group of 11 persons is good to have the chance to participate in all the activities during the class.

What I liked more about the lessons is how the teachers make them more didactic, with exercise on teams, alone, conversations in group, games even excursions. But it is not a secret that at the same time that you take the course it is important the self-studying and do the homework given in the class. The teachers don’t force you to do it, but if you really want to learn you need to be constant with it and do an extra effort. For instance, I am preparing a presentation for tomorrow, the topic are desserts also some classmates promised to bring some of them, let´s see.

Today was the first day of my conversation club at DeutschAkademie. It takes place every Friday in the mornings for one and a half hour, this month due to the holidays, we are taking 3 days of two hours each one.

I enrolled in it because I need more hours to practice my speaking. I’ve read that to be a professional in any field, like languages, mathematics, and music, whatever that you want to do with your live, you need 40.000 hours of practice in this field. This means that you don’t need to be an expert in anything, you just need practice and persistence to become an expert in something.

Therefore I need to practice my speaking German as much as I can, and this is a good way to do it. We start with a self-presentation, everybody was shy, but after some minutes we could break the ice and little by little we start talking more. In this conversation club the teacher is in the class to serve as mediator and propose topics of conversation, also to correct our mistakes. So I will add some hours to my 40.000 hours improving my German.

As I wrote before in previous articles I have met people from many countries in my German course, they came from Ukraine, Bosnia, Italy, Palestine, Iraq, Iran, China, Nigeria also from Latin America such as Brazil, Venezuela, and Colombia. All of us have made a good connection so the classes are very interesting because we are helping each other to understand the grammar and cheer us up to be better every day, therefore not only you have lessons you have also fun. Even we have created a WhatsApp group to share more examples of the lessons or if somebody gets stuck doing the homework for the next day of the course, we help each other to solve the doubts. So I can say that I have made good friends in the DeutschAkademie and also I conserve some of them from previous levels.