Bite Me, Separable Prefixes.

Well, as of today I have been in Germany one entire month, and, though the month has flown by, much has happened.

I'm still having visa issues, and am now trying to get in touch with the Portuguese consulate in Hamburg, but, surprise surprise, they are impossible to get on the phone.

This upcoming language test has got me a hot anxious mess, even though I don't take it til November.

I fight with German every day...in particular, the passive voice, which I want to set on fire, and the goddamned separable prefixes.  For example, kommen is the verb for "to come".  But then you have mitkommen (to come with), abkommen (to get away), zukommen (to approach), ankommen (to arrive), aufkommen (to jump up), hinzukommen (to accrue), vorkommen (to appear), vorbeikommen (to come by), umkommen (to go to waste/die), nachkommen (to comply with/ to discharge), durchkommen (to come through), zurückkommen (to come back), überkommen (to creep over), zusammenkommen (to come together), unterkommen (to find accommodation),  entgegenkommen (to oblige), gleichkommen (to be tantamount to), herkommen (to come here), heraufkommen (to come up), herauskommen (to come out), and hinwegkommen (to overcome/ to get over somebody)...just to name a few.

AND, like the name suggests, they separate.  Which means that "Ich komme über," "Ich komme her," "Ich komme heraus," "Ich komme vorbei," "Ich komme um," and "Ich komme unter" all mean different things.  Which isn't too horrible, until the sentences start getting longer, for example: "Ich komme bestimmt morgen um halb zwölf an." Then I hear the last prefix, have to scramble to remember what the original verb was, and how the addition of this prefix now changes what I THOUGHT the sentence was trying to say in the first place, and, oh look, the conversation moved on five minutes ago and now I'm lost.  Fuck me.

However, slowly but surely, I am reaching the magical threshold where words are starting to come faster in German than they are in English.  Sometimes I open my mouth with the intention of speaking English (to the child, or to an animal or something) and German pops out instead.  The other night I was Skyping with Shane and I could not for the life of me remember what the word for Rührer was, and I had to look it up (it's a mixer).  Likewise, just now I had to look up "trennbare Präfixe," because I couldn't remember what they were called in English. So yes. Slowly but surely.  Even though I still want to set the passive voice on fire.

Nothing too interesting has happened the last few days, but tomorrow the barn down the street invited me to accompany them to a horseshow, which will be exciting!  And Sunday I'm heading to Lüneburg with Marina, assuming the weather does not shit on us.

New favorite song!  Marina and I were singing it all last weekend.  The video is totally cheesy, but the song is still nice:

Adios!
Tina