Rain rain go away come again another day!

I used to love chanting that.

Not much has been happening recently, I don't think. Let's see. Monday I didn't go to DofE because it wasn't on; the people doing expeditions only did them at the weekend. Tuesday is today and nothing much has happened either.

I've got my German work back. Which means I've also been set the questions for my next speaking controlled assesment. I don't think I need to prepare, just to think of some complex sentences I need to sneak in. That's the annoying thing about German: I can speak it like a local with no mistakes at all and I still don't get full marks. Because I have to include complex grammar that - and this is the annoying part - doesn't even sound right. No local would ever speak like that. It's like going into an English exam and speaking in perfect English but you get marked down for not using exemplary grammar. I mean, who knows their English grammar apart from foreigners? So that can be frustrating.

Most frustrating, though, is that because I can speak German already, my entire class assumes I can also read and write it. My reading's not bad but I really struggle with the writing. It's all that grammar and spelling and things I never learnt. It's like you've grown up speaking a language all your life but you get to the age of fifteen and still don't know how to read or write it. Sure you know the alphabet and most of the sounds the letters make but that doesn't always help. And when you're speaking you can get away with the occasional "dem" instead of "den", people don't notice or they don't care, because nobody's language is perfect.

So I'll sit there in a German trying really hard to write something in German, and most of it isn't bad, because I've picked it up as I learnt with the rest of the class - that's the spelling - but grammar's difficult. Most of it just goes straight over my head, like word order. Words go in a certain order because they sound right. But no, apparently there's a "verb comma verb" thing (I have no idea what that applies to). And as I'm sitting there writing - or at least trying to - and all the while I'm getting "Alicia, how do you write this?" or "What does what I've written translate as?" or "Does this sound right?" and I can never. get. my. work. done. Argh!

I feel I've gone on about German for too long. I was going to talk about English, but this post is already too long, so I'll go.
Bye xx