Quick little update - a bad listening test result!

So, last Friday I got round to doing the practice test 03 for the B2 exam (click "set of practice exercises") but I only got 17.5 out of 25. This is sailing awfully close to the pass/fail line of 15/25 for listening comprehension. The funny thing was that I didn't find it all that difficult. It seemed a little harder than the other practice tests they had provided). It was definitely faster and I just made a couple of silly mistakes. Still, a silly mistake in an exam is a point lost!

In better news, my Austrian friends got married last Thursday night (HOORAY!) and I was lucky enough to get invited, and to sit next to the Best Man (der Trauzeuge) for the whole night. He was just as polite, easy to talk to and friendly as the newlyweds have always been to me, so I spent a lot of the night enjoying his company in German! I also played handball (schoolyard rules) with some of the young kids there, and we all spoke in German too, even though they are really native English speakers (they're grown up in Australia). The key was that I started in German and never switched back, so they stuck with it too. It's just natural to them to respond like that, I guess.

I was filled with admiration for all the non-native English speakers involved in performing a wedding ceremony (albeit a relatively casual affair) in their second language. These things are hard enough in your first language! Even the best man gave his speech in English, and I was thoroughly impressed. Awesome :-) One funny moment came when the marriage celebrant asked the best man if he had the wedding rings and he said, with typical deadpan, "of course". The celebrant, for whom cultural sensitivity seemed to be a foreign concept, said "what do you mean 'of course'? Not 'of course' at all, otherwise I wouldn't ask!" She was a bit of a crank. I explained to him later why this sounds funny in English. A note to any passing German readers: if in doubt, don't say "of course" :-)

I let myself laugh at it, in the same vein as my German-speaking friends often feel free to laugh when I mix up a phrase like "Mir ist heiss" and "ich bin heiss". Actually, I don't make this mistake much, but when it gets a little more involved - like saying "it depended on how hot I got", then things can get whacky and, apparently, hilarious :-)