Hello, my name is Grace and I come from Birmingham, England.
I grew up there but I was born in a country called Liberia in West Africa. There are only about 3 million of us in the world but we are very friendly and hospitable and we speak Liberian English (which really only Liberians understand although it is basically English with some fun long words and idioms thrown in – oohh… a bit like German?).
I have recently moved to Germany to be with my husband. We have been married 6 weeks having met in South Africa during a missionary school 2 years ago. There, he became my best friend and much more. He speaks great English having learnt a lot when he was at school and for work & we communicate in English mostly.
As I have got to know him, I have heard a lot about Germany and the culture here and find it quite similar in some ways to mine but challenging at times. However, I am growing to l like it more and more each day. I have been in Munich for 4 weeks now and I understand a lot more than I can speak. I did not learn German at school as my school specialized in French & Spanish but I liked languages very much and I often can pick up a lot of what people are saying from non-verbals and context. However, this does not help with my grammar and people here (including my husband) really struggle to understand me when I try to speak the little German I have managed to pick up.
Today was the first day of my Deutsch Akademie language course. I really enjoyed it and learnt a lot from interacting with the teacher and my classmates who are from all over the world. It is nice to start from the beginnnig with them. I picked up a lot of Basic German from a short online course I did about 6 months ago, but I think I have learnt a lot more even in just one day being with them.
I hope the Deutsch course will help me not only understand the language better but also help me and my husband understand each other better too. I would love to work asap and hope this course can help speed up this process too.
Watch this space!!! Who knows, I may even be writing all of this in German by the end of the course – or am I too hopeful?