How quickly can you learn German?

Hi everyone.

I've started my third week of summer intensive German (the whole first year of German in 9 weeks), which means that at the end of this week I will have completed the first quarter, equivalent to German 101. Wow. There have been five chapters worth of vocabulary each with about 100+ adjectives, prepositions, nouns, verbs, seperable verbs, and other kinds of words. Once again, I'm thankful for my better than average memory recall. It's incredible how much we cover every class period. We meet Monday through Friday for three hours each day and the time flies by. It's nothing short of astonishing and Rachel and I often wonder how slow normal 101 must be since we're not entirely overwhelmed with the amount we're learning.

(I believe that since I last wrote my social status has changed. Rachel is my beautiful girlfriend and we have been together for 2 months. Yay! Here is a picture of us at my Mom's house in Oregon next to the Columbia River. The land behind us and on the other side of the river is Washington.)Anywhoo, plans are continuing to come together for our year long physics exchange to Justus Liebig Universität in Giessen, Germany. We have our plane tickets (complete with connection in Reykjavik, Iceland) and our acceptance letters. That's about it so far. No worries though because I'm sure we won't forget too much if both of us are thinking about what to bring. Unfortunately, Rachel and I think alike probably 90% of the time. Problem? Possibly but I'm not going to worry about it.

And now I must needs be getting back to meine Hausaufgaben (homework). Until next time....

Prost!