21 Oct, Friday

Had my written exam yesterday and my oral exam will be on Monday. This is my last weekend in Dresden. I really enjoyed these past 2 months in Dresden and I hope I have the chance to come back again. The 2 months have been interesting, challenging and sometimes frustrating. It's interesting to be able to get to know people from so many different countries and to learn a foreign language together with them; it's extremely challenging to speak only German any time and anywhere and yes, I did it; and sometimes it's frustrating to try to accustom living with someone from a different culture, referring to my roommate from Uzbekistan. The experiences have been fantastic. If I have the chance to stay here for another 6 months, I believe I would be able to improve my German much much more. My classmates this term are from Italy, Switzerland, Poland, Netherland, Ukraine, Ecaduor, Slovakei and Czech Republic. Some of my classmates are still studying (in Uni, either finishing their Bachelor or doing their Masters/ PhD) and I find it awesome that they travel all the way to Germany to perfect the language. I wonder how things would turn out if I were to know/ be able to decide at their age what I wanted to do in life. They know what they want and are here to achieve their goal. I'm sure I will miss here. Very much.

It's now autumn and the leaves are changing colour. The weather has been poor the past few weeks, compared to the sunshine we have in September.

3 Oct 2016 Dresden

Hi, today is the German Reunification Day (Tag der Deutschen Einheit). My first class term has been over last week and most of my classmates and roommate had left. I enjoyed being in my class a lot; the people were fun and we had a really good mix. There were people from US, Spain, France, Norway, Italy, Poland, Brazil and Thailand. I was also the only Singaporean in the institute. The institute had organised weekend excursion trips and I had joined in most of them except for the trip to Moritzburg. We went to Leipzig, Old Town tour, New Town tour, Radeberger Pilsner Brewery, Radebeul Schloss Wackerbarth (a wineyard), Bautzen (a small town where the Sorbish minority group lives) and Sächsische Schweiz Bastei (a national park). I also went to Berlin over the weekend with my cousin and it was great. The learning experience here so far has been great. Many of my classmates were very motivated to learn German and we spoke only German both in and out of class. We had a wide age range in our class but most of the people were very humourless including the French and I remember there was always something to laugh about. I like Dresden. It's a very liveable city and it's not too big or too small. There's a good balance between the Old Town and New Town. My first opera concert in the SemperOper was also amazing. There are also many interesting museums in Dresden, for example the Militär Historisches Museum, Deutche Hygienes Museum and Verkehrs Museum etc. I didn't visit all but it's worth taking a look. Döner here tastes fantastic and it costs only 4 Euro. Looking forward to the following class term and hope I really speak up more and practise, practise, practise.