Climb Every Mountain

There are good and bad days of learning a foreign language. Since moving to Germany, my journey to become fluent has been filled with both. There have been overwhelmingly good experiences: receiving compliments from strangers on my abilities, speaking German for an entire afternoon with The German’s parents, and successfully completing my first call to a business.

However, there have also been absolutely terrible experiences: asking a question and not understanding a single word of the response, failed exchanges with neighbors, and in general, becoming completely overwhelmed by the conversations of native speakers. On these bad days, it feels like the German language is suffocating—tearing against my throat, abusing my ear drums, and congesting my vision. The sheer distance between my current level of German and fluency doesn’t seem daunting, but impossible.

On bad days, a complaint or two to The German will usually lift my spirits. On the really bad days, a good cry might be just what the doctor orders.

But at the end of the day, the most important thing is that I pick myself up, brush off the bad feelings, and continue along the rocky, steep path of becoming fluent in a foreign language.

Lesen Sie diesen Blog-Post hier auf deutsch!

This comic comes from Itchy Feet.