I went yarn shopping this morning and had a nice chat with the woman working at the yarn store at the time. She showed me around the store, we talked about what I knit, and we talked about what yarns are hard to find in the US and which are hard to find in Germany. For the record - Madelinetosh is apparently hard to get in Germany and Wollmeise is ridiculously hard to get in the US. I went specifically for the Wollmeise. I was also easily able to negotiate my "credit card" (it's not a credit card in the US but in Europe it's treated as such which is logical) not working.
So yeah - I can do a lot of things, and I'm also so exceedingly aware that I'm not at all where I want to be. It's a weird situation to be in. It's both good and bad I think. It is useful to know that I have a ways to go in order to get to where I want to be and have specific mistakes pointed out on a regular basis (in the context of a language course). It's also nice to know that I've been able to successfully negotiate every situation I've been in over the past nearly 4 weeks in German. The only thing that wasn't totally or 99% in German was the first, "so I missed my flight and it's your fault not mine" - though in totally different significantly more polite words. Even then I negotiated most if not all of figuring my way around train stuff by myself. I also wasn't originally planning on doing hotel stuff in English because of the amount of money involved but I successfully did so while stressed, in the beginning stages of jet lag, and with sheer lack of sleep.
What's hard is that while I know I tend to underestimate my abilities in just about every aspect of my life, I'm not sure if I'm actually underestimating my German abilities or if I'm actually just being realistic. Needless to say - it's an interesting phase to be in. I know this will more or less entirely go away when I get back to the US but if I'm able to do my masters in Germany it'll come right back. I suspect eventually, if I do manage to live here permanently or at least long term, I will get to the point where I'm not constantly underestimating or seriously questioning my German abilities - perhaps after I finish a MA where the teaching language is German
![Wink ;)](./images/smilies/icon_e_wink.gif)