Time Warp

Three weeks can feel like forever. Three weeks can feel like no time at all. I’ve found language camp to be both at the same time. 

In our tiny town of Kaub, we’ve stayed mostly tucked into classrooms and along winding cobblestone streets, living lifetimes in miniature. Friendships have sprouted and blossomed quickly, even as we know we won’t see each other again until the mid-year seminars next January. 

Every day writes so many new stories; rising early for a sunrise hike, walking the fog-draped streets with Brötchen and Milka Schokolade in hand, watching the stars peek through the clouds at night, and finally finding the courage to stumble through German sentences together. 

Time moves strangely here. Mornings arrive soft and quiet, afternoons blur together with language lessons and group seminars, and nights hum with the echo of friendly voices - this is a closeness that usually takes months or years to build, and yet here, the circumstance of time and place grew these relationships almost overnight. 

Now, just as quickly, it’s changing. The bubble of Kaub will burst. Next week, we will scatter across Germany into new towns, new families, new communities, new lives. The thought is peculiar: to leave behind something that feels almost whole already, only to begin again.