Happy Thanksgiving!

No one celebrates it here of course. I'm going to try to make a turkey day dinner for Jan, since he's never had one. Just have to find turkey, cranberries, and pumpkin :-P

I've had three days of class so far and I'm loving it. We're starting with the basics but moving very fast. We're expected to learn the new words on our own, with a dictionary in our various languages, and then we learn how to apply them to sentences in class. We do a -lot- of listening and talking in class, which is great.

Dutch classes at JBI have 8-16 students, and ours has 10. I like small, since it makes it easy to get to know each other. 2 are from China, 1 from Egypt, 1 from Russia, 1 from Poland, 1 from Kazakhstan, 1 from South Africa, 1 from Indonesia, 1 from Colombia, and 1 from the US (me)! Everyone happens to speak passable English, so the instructors use English to explain new words or more complicated concepts. Most of the first lesson was in English, but by the third lesson most instructions were in Dutch, and understandable.

Most of us speak some Dutch already. Some have been here for several years, but were in English-language school or working at a job that didn't require Dutch. Only one showed up in class speaking no Dutch at all (from China to study communications) but is keeping up with things well enough. We all have prior university education, except for two who are learning Dutch so they can go into regular university classes.

To speak Dutch well enough for a job or university classes, we have to be at the B2 level. The JBI classes for level A, B1, and then B2 each last about 2 months, and are scheduled to start a week or two after the previous level ends. If all goes well, I'll be speaking acceptable Dutch by June 2011 :-) That's 6 months at the intensive rate, but 12 months at the normal rate. Both rates are designed for people with university education or qualified for a university education. It probably takes a lot longer with the ROC classes, but I don't know how long.

Both of the teachers for the class are very experienced and enthusiastic. One wrote the book we're using, and the other is very good at focusing on pronounciation. I've been using my electronic translator (Franklin 1870 with Dutch-English Bookman card), and it's been great so far. The only words I haven't found aren't on Google Translate either. The teachers focus on regular speech ... rarely formal, and with a lot of commonly used slang instead of too-proper terminology.

There's a big computer lab in the building, plus a separate language lab for speaking and listening. I don't have any homework to do today while waiting for class to start (got it done yesterday), so I'll check out the computer lab instead.