Full Head; Sore Butt

My German classes continue to enlighten me and frustrate me in equal measure.  I am SO SO far from being fluent or anything even close and yet I keep at it.   Along with the other 16 of my fellow classmates we keep at it.  And often I laugh a little to myself at how childish we sound and how far FAR we have to go before we can actually even hold a simple conversation with a grocery store clerk. I know what it was like to go from knowing very little to no Spanish to becoming somewhat fluent and very comfortable with the language.  It was a ton of time and even more importantly a lot of excitement and passion and desire to know it.   I know I will not become a fluid German speaker, I just know it.
I often wonder how many of my classmates feel the same.  The other day one of them, out of frustration, asked the teacher "when we will learn x,y and z" And the teacher made a good point, they said German is a marathon and we need training and you can't run for 5 minutes and assume you are ready to run a marathon.  But then he said that he could understand that student and the rest of us in the class could understand him.  We all agreed enthusiastically that yes, we could in fact understand him perfectly even if his German wasn't perfect.  And that is when I told myself to always remember that the goal of learning another language is to communicate and that it doesn't always have to be perfect in order to communicate. But I continue to be truly impressed with my classmates.  They seem to be taking it all so seriously.  They have different colored markers and highlighters and are making charts of the verbs and the die, der, das',  and are really invested in the language.

Just look at the length of some of these words!!  German is Kuh-Ray-Zee

I'm definitely making progress but let's just say I've run maybe 400 meters of a marathon.  I'm impressed with myself that I sit and listen to 4 hours of nonstop German every day and understand probably 95% of it.  Granted the teachers speak very slowly and clearly and I know the context and I have a couple of text book to look things up. But still 4 hours of a foreign language everyday is a lot.  Not to mention the actual sitting for 4 hours everyday.  My body is feeling the lack of movement and the constant sitting.  We get a 15 minute break and a 5 minute break but that still breaks down to 220 minutes of nonstop German and sitting every day.  Sadly I noticed that my step count has gone from an average of 7-8 miles a day to roughly 3-4.  No wonder my body is hurting.
And my brain.  Today at the end of class I just kind of shut down. I was full. There was no more going into my brain.

I have noticed though that since starting the class I am engaging in the language around me so much more. I try to read the signs on storefronts and advertisements and break out the verbs and nouns and mull over the words I know and don't know, I overhear conversations on the street and on the bus and I understand some of it.

I sometimes feel that skipping the very first class, (A1.1) I have done myself a disservice.  There are things that I know I should know from this first class that would make my learning so much easier.  Not so much so that I would give a full 5 weeks to it but I feel like there was one step in the ladder I missed on the way up.  It is funny because I have always felt this way about my Spanish learning. I learned Spanish mostly by living in Mexico and loving the culture and the people so much that I wanted to learn how to communicate with them. It wasn't until later when I decided to teach Spanish did I go back to school and take a few classes just so I could get my endorsement.  But I've always felt a bit insecure with my Spanish even after over a dozen years of living in Spanish speaking countries teaching it for nearly 8 years.  It really makes me want to take some Spanish classes now that my Spanish has become so rusty due to lack of use.
I don't NEED German now the way I needed (in my heart and soul) Spanish then.  But I will keep at it.  I just signed up for the next 5 week course so at the very least I will have 10 weeks of German under my belt and will be able to look to my husband and children for the answers to my German questions from here on out.