The first day of school is always filled with mixed emotions, and my first day of Deutsche Akademie was not different. One the one hand, I was excited about all the German I would learn and the classmates I would meet. On the other hand, being in a classroom for 3 hours after working for 9 hours sounded… terrible. But as I sat down in the classroom I was immediately caught up in introducing myself to my classmates, trying to remember the names for different countries in German, and following along with the teacher as we played games to learn the words for different relatives and family members.

You can imagine my surprise when I looked up at the clock for the first time all day and I realized I had been in the class for 2 and a half hours already. The time had gone by incredibly fast and I felt comfortable saying a few things in German that I had just learned that day. The class was constantly talking in German (since it was the only language many of us had in common), and I felt completely comfortable to make mistakes when speaking because everyone else was doing the same. Best of all, I had learned all the words for family members, gotten some much needed practice for the different cases in German, and gotten to learn a bit about each of the people in my class. I had some homework exercises to reinforce what I had learned that day, but it wasn’t too much work and I was looking forward to putting what I had learned into practice.

When the class was over I realized I am actually really looking forward to the next month. Sure, giving up 12 hours of free time per week is a pretty big investment, but the time went by so quickly that I hardly even noticed it. And between the people I had met and the German I had learned, it was already well worth the time.