Learning German can be Fun...or, at least, Funny

So, I know I have written a little bit about my teacher, Frau Ruth, but I figure it is time for you all to hear more. She is very funny, and always laughs (in a good natured way) when we can't figure out what is going on in class. She is really great about trying to make our lessons interactive and thinking of exercises for us to do so that we can remember what we have learned (not that this always works, but I appreciate the effort). I don't know how old she is, and I am sure I won't ask, but she is a very animated, interesting teacher. She really knows how to make class go by very quickly.

The other day, we were put into groups of 3 or 4 and told to make up a story that corresponded with 4 photos in our workbook. The first photo showed a woman saying goodbye to her family at a German airport. The next picture showed the same woman in an office building talking to a skinny young man with a mullet. The third photo showed the two of them in a park. (Now, this is where it gets interesting, at least for me. Which means it should be interesting for you, too. If it isn't you are probably boring.) In this picture, the woman is quite obviously pregnant and she and the mullet-man are arguing. In the fourth and final picture, the woman is back in the German airport with a baby in her arms, no mullet-man, and her parents are gaying at her despondently. And so, the basic story was quite obvious to everyone. Woman leaves homeland to find job in new country, woman meets unattractive man and for some reason sleeps with him, woman gets pregnant, unnattractive man doesn't want woman to be pregnant, woman has baby and returns home to her parents, who are ashamed. Everyone got this, more or less. My group titled our story: 'Der Man Lügt' (or 'The Man Lies'...I wanted to change it to 'Der Man Immer Lügt' - the man always lies, but I was the only girl in the group and my idea was vetoed). We decided that the only way this girl would have slept with the mullet man was if they had consumed many cocktails together one day after work. We enjoyed looking up phrases like 'one night stand' and 'one thing led to another' and 'impregnated.' Now, I ask you, what kind of a classrooom environment is this???

When we were learning about the past tense, we had to write a short story about when we were teenagers and we had a disagreement with our parents. Well, I find fiction much more interesting than fact, so I wrote a story about how I always wanted to go out to bars and clubs when I was 16 and my parents told me that I should work hard in school and be more respectful. I knew more than they did, however, and I kept on with my wild ways. Eventually, I dropped out of school and became a bartender, but now I have very little money and I wish I had listened to my parents when I was younger. I tried to give it a little moral, you know?