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Dutch language test! I studied hard, and scored 8.9 out of 10, higher than anticipated.

Sadly, my husband is struggling with the material. He set a record for the new lowest score, which I will not print here. :( His ADHD brain isn't compatible with the teaching style.

Last week he discovered DuoLingo, which he plays daily, and his language skils are already stronger. I don't believe everyone will benefit from a "gameified" learning app, but DuoLingo seems to be working for him.

In real life, I've had three (3) in-person interactions using (nearly) 100% Dutch language. They've all been customer service scenarios, where I'm buying or ordering stuff. Pretty good! Typically the native Dutch speakers will switch to English if they sense you're struggling, so apparently I'm faking it well enough.

Today was class (we're entering the final weeks), and this was the first day that everyone was completely confused by the material. I finally agree with the popular concensus, Dutch is a difficult language to learn.

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DAYS HAVE PASSED SINCE I WROTE THE ABOVE ^^

... Because I have no job, yet somehow I lack free time for lazy pursuits like blogging. How is this possible?? Actually, I do know the answer, I'll unpack this in a minute.

So, I was writing a long rant about the correct articles in the Dutch language; basically every noun is either "de ___" or "het ___". There exists a long list of rules which determine why the pants are "de broek", yet the book is "het boek". It's a long, long list of rules. Since we're beginners, it's easier to memorize the articles for the handful of nouns we're exposed to.

If you're curious: some languages have "masculine" and "feminine" objects. (Spanish has this feature; el versus la.) This is not that! Here's a fun fact I learned today: Dutch also has masculine and feminine objects, in addition to its articles.

... So anyway. When you want to embellish something with an adjective, or indicate which object you're talking to/about, the Dutch language will wreck your sh!t in a hurry. Here's a glimpse of the iceberg, notice the subtle change to the adjective:

"een goed boek" (a good book)

"een goede broek" (a good pair of pants)

Wikipedia has a handy page with many informative charts, such as this hotness:

Dude

Also I learned that our class (accelerated A1) is a new offering! We're guinea pigs. Even the teacher is shocked at how fast we're expected to proceed. We had the big test scheduled for next week, haha it's cancelled because we're too slow. Hmm

Discouraging. Why are we torturing ourselves?? I'm not sure this was worthwhile. In private chats with the other students, everyone says they're not planning to take the A2 class. Should we give up and move to Amsterdam, where English is fully-supported?

With this class, and the myriad of other pressures, I feel like I'm constantly running on fumes. I'm meeting with a physical therapist next Friday, there's a program for treating individuals who experience burnout. I'm already worried about the language barrier, because we're not in Amsterdam. Rrrr

There's a ton of other crap happening. We had Thanksgiving dinner at the only restaurant serving it, the Hard Rock Café. :P It was actually a nice night, we had a great view of tourist boats on the water:

Then we walked around, which was overwhelming. Headlights were too bright, bicyclists everywhere, weird road signs, many people. I'm easily overstimulated, I've dealt with this all my life, but this was extreme! Amsterdam at night is definitely hard-mode. I think my attention pipeline may be worsening as I get older. Like any red-blooded adult man, I'm choosing to do nothing about it, because a billion other things are demanding my time.

Otherwise, we're not really "doing" anything. I'm struggling to find motivation for daily activities. It sucks! To be continued, re: physical therapy appointment.