My first week in
Germany is almost over! The first four weeks of my stay are being spent at a language
camp in Hedersleben. While my German has rapidly improved,
I still do not know enough to comprehend someone speaking German at normal
speed. I also do not have the ability to read so far, but I'm holding on to the
hope that by next week, I'll know enough to at least understand the
general topic of conversation. It is both a blessing and a curse that I am at
the language camp with fifty other English-speaking students. In language
camp, Monday through Friday, we spend six hours a day practicing German in a classroom
setting and then an additional hour of quiet study time. We are also supposed to
speak German from breakfast until dinner, but no one yet knows enough German to
carry a meaningful conversation, making it difficult to follow that rule.
I went to my first
church service in another language this morning. Hedersleben is so small that
there are only two churches: a Catholic and a Protestant, but the Protestant
church only holds service every other week and this week was the off week. So…I
went to a Catholic church for the second time in my life. I don’t know how much
of a difference it actually made because I didn’t understand any of the service. Because I could not process the words of
the priest, I had more freedom to pray on my own, which I greatly appreciated. I
had the time to be still and listen.
