First Week

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.