Gezakt

"Gezakt" means "failed" if you're wondering :-P My class had our final exam for progressing to B2 classes on Thursday and Friday. Monday we received emails saying if we had passed or failed. I passed the writing test and failed the spoken test. Only 25% of the class passed, which seems a bit ... off. It wasn't like in A level where a few students were slacking, one didn't know how to study very well, and another had pronunciation problems. Everyone in B1 was studying a lot, and I was probably the closest thing we had to a slacker in class, since I missed a third of the classes due to being sick. From what I heard, most people that failed the class had also failed the written test, so grammar was the main problem.

Our teacher spoke briefly about problems with the course itself on a couple occasions. Apparently the average pass rate for B1 intensive classes at James Boswell Institute is under 20%. So our class was actually above average! Her opinion is that we're too rushed in A level and the grammar doesn't really have the time to sink in, though just enough for a lot of us to barely pass A. Then we're in B1 and need to progress to a certain level, but just don't have enough time to do it, even if we're doing everything we need to be doing. The biggest indicator of who passed and who didn't was how well they were doing prior to starting to B1, which was generally based on how much Dutch they know prior to starting A level.

If I'd paid for the class with my own money, I'd be a bit ticked off to know that my odds of passing were less than 1 in 5, regardless of how much and how efficiently I studied. One student mentioned today that failing was unexpected, and a bunch of us agreed ... we'd been doing the right things and making fast progress. But it simply wasn't possible to make fast enough progress. The teacher told us she focused on giving encouragement during the course because students usually give up if told they aren't doing as well as they need to be, such as one in our class who was having very basic speaking problems and stopped going to class when the teacher spoke with him about it.

Hopefully JBI will re-evaluate the course and make some changes. If B1 or A need to be longer, then they need to do it. Or label the class to make it clear that it's only going to work for people that have been in the Netherlands for a while and already picked up a lot of the vocabulary and basic grammar.

Well, I was upset at first, and cried - mostly from frustration at being sick so friggin much. After thinking about (justifying?) it a bit, I reached the conclusion that I don't want to start B2 next week anyhow. I can barely make it to classes as it is, and suffer through them with physical exhaustion, pain, and mental fatigue. I can't understand half of what people are saying and can't actively read in a learning context at all. My brain is just not processing things well. I already have the B2 course book, so my plan for now is to study at home and make Jan grade my homework :-) Hopefully if I'm not exhausting myself just by getting to classes, it'll be possible for me to actually focus and study.

My next doctor appointment is tomorrow, but it'll probably take at least a couple weeks just for a diagnosis. And then it might take much longer to treat the problem. There's a review class all the other failing students can take (400 euros, 15 lessons over 5 weeks), but it's only two weeks til that starts, and I probably won't be physically ready for it. The blood tests came back normal. Even my cholesterol and triglycerides had improved from a year or two ago :-P So no electrolyte imbalance, no anemia, no diabetes. My huisarts (general practitioner) asked if I thought it might be Lyme disease, but I haven't had a rash or been frolicking in the fields with ticks. My primary problem now is muscle weakness, resulting in pain, shakiness, and cramps (in that order) if I overuse them. The appointment tomorrow is with an internist, and I suspect more tests will be following soon.

In better news, I started with volunteer work yesterday. It was pretty enjoyable, though I had to take the bus instead of riding my bike, and the closer bus stop was closed because the street was closed, and I had to walk about a kilometer. Currently that's enough walking to cause me some suffering, even if I do it at a leisurely pace. But I had plenty of time to rest after I got to work, even though I was just barely on time. Everyone spent about half an hour drinking coffee (water for me) and chatting. I participated quite a bit, but they didn't feel awkward about chatting with eachother when I couldn't really keep up, though were happy to explain words I asked about. I processed the incoming mail, which included some reading and writing, checked some numbers against each other, and recorded and printed out the weekly energy usage and such. I was also shown the ins and outs of the copy machine, which is pretty nifty.

It was a slow day, so after doing all that with a lot of random chatting interspersed, they gave me a little magazine discussing housing laws and such to read, which was pretty interesting. I used my elite copy machine skills to make a shrunken copy of the magazine to take home to read some more. They asked how long I'd been here and said I was doing very well with my speaking for being here 7 months. Maybe I should ask them to talk to my teacher :-P

We did more gardening over the weekend prior to the previous one, and got the front area sorted. The ivy was trimmed back, the cement block around it removed, bricks dug up where the roots had burrowed between them, and the roots pulled out or deeply cut. I HATE ivy :-P I got a fuschia, carnation, and white hyacinth to plant in the cement block, and transplanted some purple pansies that were in a plastic pot. Then we got a tall black squarish pot to put in front of the trash area, with a small climbing rose, a colombine, and a little azalea. We also got two smaller pots for the backyard against the gray brick shed wall, one with an camellia and one with a climbing hydrangea.

It's been pretty exhausting but the garden is finally DONE. Everything is growing very well, except the purple basil which really didn't like the sun as much as it was supposed to. It's transplanted to a less sunny area now and looks like it might be recovering. The blueberry bushes look so leafy and healthy, with some new upward growth as well. The roses have lots of leaves starting, and the fuchsias are just gorgeous. The heavily pruned hibiscus tree is looking good too, with lots of little twigs starting to grow from the main branches and trunks. Even the sad little beet I kept stepping on is growing vigorously :-)

We got a little birdhouse to attach to the shed wall. It was the only one we saw that looked like a birdhouse, instead of abstract industrial art :-P We also have a little bird feeder hanging in the hibiscus tree, but the birds are still more interested in the peanuts and seedballs we hung in the tree a week or two earlier. I doubt we'll get birds this year, since most had already started nesting when we put it up, but there's two of the cute little yellow ones in the garden next door that spend a lot of time in our garden, and two really stupid little brown birds that are nesting in a neighbor's roof gutter. When it rained the first time after they started their nest, both were standing right outside the nest and looking at it in a puzzled birdy manner. But they keep adding to the nest there, so ... not very smart birdies!