Inburgering Progress

We just finished our third week of B1 level Dutch class. Which means just 5 weeks til B2 starts. Eek! If I look at all we're learning and supposed to be learning, it seems hopelessly overwhelming... but somehow it's sticking pretty well. Just yesterday I got a "heel goed!" on a grammar quiz :-P

The main thing now is sorting out the rules, and picking up as many new words as I can. One nice thing about Dutch is that a lot of words get recycled. One verb might have one of 5 or 6 different prefixes added to it that create a different meaning while still being related to the basic verb. And nouns can be stacked to form new nouns that are longer than the English alphabet. They're scary to look at, but easy if you break them down into their basic parts. Dutch word formation is actually pretty logical. Too bad the grammar is so complicated :-P

I'm still a lot more confident with reading and writing than I am with speaking. Our teacher spoke to the class about it today, and listened to our concerns regarding why we don't speak Dutch much outside the class. Some had problems with Dutchies getting snobby toward their bad grammar and switching to English. I mentioned that it's hard to express myself fully in Dutch. She suggested persistence and finding nice people to talk to (and implied that the mean ones shouldn't aren't worth being upset by), as well as speaking Dutch as much as possible at home, and switching to English for the complicated stuff. I'm scared, but I think I'm ready to give it a try.

She also suggested getting in touch with a volunteer outreach organization, since that usually involves speaking with Dutchies. I've already got an appointment for that, in a week or so. I had a pre-appointment last week with my integration person, and filled out a form. I needed some help with that still, since it wasn't the sort of form we practice with in class :-P Anyhow, she'd printed out a list of different volunteer opportunities, and there were probably around 30 that were fairly diverse. I think the one I'd like best is teaching computer skills to immigrants that don't speak Dutch. It's typically one day per week, which should work fine with my schedule.

A bit of trivia: The Netherlands is the country with the highest percentage of its population contributing money to charity or doing volunteer work ... 77%! Volunteering especially seems far more common than back in the US. Granted, people don't work 50 hours per week here, and part time work is very common for women.