Dutch for Dummies

Today I started my Nederlands Intensif 1 class. My alarm went off at 7:30 and I jumped out of bed at 7:45, eager to get my day started. I walked to class and somehow managed to find the entrance down a narrow alley off of a street. ( Truth be told I just followed an asian girl who looked as lost as I did). I was directed upstairs to a classroom where there were two other women. We quickly introduced ourselves and one was from the UK, the other from Australia. A few more people trickled in but it was getting after 9, which is when the class was supposed to start and there was no teacher. Finally a woman came down and told us we were in the wrong room so we joined the rest of our class upstairs. 

She began the class by talking completely in Dutch...and not even jokingly. She was looking at us like she expected us to understand one syllable of what she was saying. I quickly pulled out my registration sheet. Yep, it was supposed to be Dutch1. So why was this woman talking to us in Dutch and more importantly, why was half of the class shaking their heads in agreement like they knew what she was saying!? We went around and did introductions..in Dutch. She had written on the board what we were supposed to say. So I was about the halfway point and everyone up to me seemed like they were native Dutch speakers. I stumbled and muttered my way through, with help from my Australian partner(hey! she's been in the country 4 months, she's got a little bit of the language under her belt!). Luckily, things started looking up after me as the second half of the class seemed in the same boat as I. 

Interesting thing about living abroad is that is really is a true melting pot of nationalities. In my class, I was the only American. We had people from Iran, Iraq, Bulgaria(i think, i couldn't really understand her), Israel, Italy, Greece, UK, Australia, Switzerland, Spain, Germany, and some other place i can't remember. The negative thing about being from America is that the way we talk is very different from the European sector so the syllables and pronunciations don't roll off my tongue as easily as they do the others. Until about halfway through, I wasn't sure I was coming back. But I started catching on a bit. I learned the alphabet and how to introduce myself. When we went through the alphabet, we had to go around the room and each say a letter. Well, of course, the only letter that is difficult for me to pronounce is G. We have no sound like it in the English language. It's that guttural sound  you hear a lot in German. Try sounding these letters out  "kh" and that's similar to the G sound here. But I stumbled through it and I think I will go back and show these Dutchies what us Americans are made of...for good or bad :)