First Week in Germany

It's been a little more than a week since I've been in Germany. This first week has been well-great-nerve wracking-full of firsts-that about sums it up. School in Germany is a lot different than in the US. I'm taking a lot of the same classes as in the US. I have bio/chemistry/physics, trigonometry, English, Spanish, German, politics, art and philosophy. I would have taken similar classes in the US. For the most part I understand what the teachers are saying. German classes is the hardest class for me. It's a literature based classes and there's lots of text reading. Physics is also hard but I probably wouldn't understand the subject in English either.

I'm really glad that I've learned German prior to coming here. I've been studying it intensely since 7th grade and taking private lessons since 8th grade and I can speak it really well. I'd be totally lost without that previous study.

It's really fun to speak German here. Sometimes I can trick people into thinking I'm German. Someone in my math class thought I was a transfer student from Germany. It's really unusual for Americans here to speak German let alone fluently. I can' wait till I'm really fluent.

My classmates and teachers have been really nice to me. They've explained words I don't understand, given extra help, let me look on their text books, lent me things and included me in group work. It's been a great first week in Germany!