Remember everything I wrote in that last post about speaking well? I take it all back. OK, not all of it. But I feel like I've taken a massive step backwards or something. I feel like I'm struggling and not doing well again. Is this just how learning a language goes? I make a little progress with speaking, but then I feel like I lose it? It's really frustrating. It's a little bit reassuring that I can understand a lot more things, but I really want my speaking to get better!

Speaking of understanding, I really do feel a lot better with that. I can understand TV shows better, and even just regular conversations. TV might be easier because they always speak Hochdeutsch (where they speak without any accent). Conversations are definitely more difficult though, especially around here. A lot of people here speak the Schwäbisch dialect, which is quite hard to understand. What's funny, though, is that people here acknowledge that they're hard to understand, and other freely admit that they can't understand all German dialects! In the US, you'd never hear a Southerner admit that they don't speak normal English and that they might be difficult to understand, just as how it's totally taboo to say that people who speak Southern are hard to understand.

On a completely different topic, I've discovered playlists on my iPod. I always knew how to make them before, but for some reason I've always found them daunting. I never made any because I didn't feel...competent? I don't know. Making playlists isn't exactly an art, but in my mind I've equated it with deciding the order of songs on an album, which I highly doubt I'm qualified to do.

Anyway, I've gotten past that and now I'm playlist-crazy. Except I haven't really gotten it down, since my way of making playlists is saying, "OK, I'll make 3 broad categories and divide all the songs in my iPod between them." Somehow I put Michael Jackson's "Black or White" (which I love!) in the same general category as a song from O Brother, Where Art Thou? Even I'm not sure how I did that.

I've also gotten a little obsessed with eMusic.com, which I LOVE. If you've never heard of it, check it out. There isn't much music from the big-name artists because the big labels refuse to do business with eMusic--all because their music is DRM-free, meaning that it can be played on any player anywhere, unlike iTunes songs. My obsession with eMusic has frustrated me this week though, because their website has only been working sporadically. They also seem to think that I'm in the US, which means that I can't download music that other people in Europe can. I'm not sure why they think this, since when I first got here that music was available to me. They're also horrible about responding to customer service emails. I've sent them about 5, starting about 2 weeks ago, and haven't had a single response, except the automated ones saying, "Sorry that your eMusic download manager isn't working! We'll get back to you," which isn't even what I wrote them about.

Anyway, except for horrible customer service, the site is great and has a huge selection. It's also really easy to find new music from it. I've discovered soo many things that I never would have listened to without it.

Not much has happened since Wednesday. The most exciting thing that happened was that we had carrot soup on Thursday (maybe?) and it was delicious. I still don't like most soups, but I guess those vegetable ones are really my thing. I plan on eating them quite a bit.

OK, time to get back to music downloading and playlist making!