In which my brain struggles to complete any thought using just one language.
September came with a multitude of things including a school team bonding week, a lot of going to school, wearing sweaters (yip yip!), visiting Wittenberg with my extended host family, and my 18th birthday! From these first two months away from the US I have gained a new love for my home, my biological family, and my senior class. Whilst living my life here on the opposite side of the globe, I can easily imagine my little siblings growing up so fast, my friends hosting Bonnie Tyler themed parties and having a great senior year, and my musical friends bluegrass music festival hopping from state to state. These things haven't necessarily made me homesick yet, but they do give a lot of food for thought about what/who/where has influenced me the most in the last couple of years. I appreciate in indescribable amounts how lucky I am to be where I am for my last year in high school. It's curious what a little change in perspective does for the soul.
From others I have heard that this part of the experience is pretty quid pro quo. Life is starting to become familiar again, the days are quickly becoming weeks as the home to school and back again regimen slowly turns over and over like one of those weird fractal videos; hypnotizing us all into thinking maybe magic exists in mathematics. Now that I'm over two months in, I'm starting to feel the effects of the expected up and down swings during an exchange year. There was a definite moment where I felt a little down, around the time that the Roseburg shooting occurred. I really missed being able to express myself. A lot of what I thought about were my hobbies, animals, music, etc. Things that before I came here were so integrated into my life, I never considered living without them to be a possibility.
I've never really felt lonely here, but at the beginning of the school year I wasn't overly confident about my abilities to present myself to my new classmates or how to be myself. Foreign exchange does some really odd things to you. Without realizing it I was at serious risk of de-evolving into some weird prepubescent version of the person that I thought I was. Not quite infantile, I would compare it more to moving during middle school, except this time not in English. That being said, I still have to constantly choose how I navigate the school day, deciding to talk a lot in German or sitting back and waiting for someone else to initiate a conversation. One generalization for exchange in Germany: they generally won't. You have to make yourself socially available in order to make friends out of classmates.
I worked hard during high school to change my shy personality into something that was outgoing, well spoken, and comfortable talking or performing on any stage. Annnnndd my point here? All of that was obliterated in the first month of being an exchange student at a real school. All of the things I had to go through during 7th grade to find a way to incorporate myself into an already established, tight knit class are happening to me again. What I've learned is that it didn't kill me then, and it won't kill me know, or the next time, or the next time I have to move somewhere new.
More pertinent than difficult things however, there have been some really incredible upswings lately. Now I feel much more at home here, I love my host family and host community, I'm surviving school and while I wasn't paying attention- my German even got a little better. Small victories I tell ya. They mean the world when you work really hard for them. Yesterday I wrote my Deutsch (Literature) Klausur and you don't want to know the grade I got on it, but I am still proud of my very own essay in German!
A little about the traveling I've done in the past two months!
In September I went with my class to the hills of Naumburg where we were supposed to bond during weird workshops like juggling, labyrinth life path drawing, team building games, and even a graffiti class. Despite some of the random themes of life paths and a few confusing activities involving listening to indi rock and mentally analyzing it to think deeply about our lives, it was really a great time to spend with my classmates and get out of the house for a few days. Naumburg has a really interesting castle and a dom/cathedral, with a lovely princess story and lots of beautiful rolling hills.
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| View of Nuamburg from an apple orchard |
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| School buds took me out for waffles after school on my birdday!!! |
Around the middle of September I spent a weekend in Wittenberg with my host family's extended family for a 50th wedding anniversary celebration, and to see the city where Martin Luther started the Protestant Reformation in 1517. We also had some fun putting on a Dirndl fashion show, and going out to the neighborhood Gasthouse for Schnitzel with extended fam.
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| Dirndl Mania (Opa telling me something important while I teach other people how to use my stone age camera) |
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| Wittenberg Stadt Church, where Martin Luther preached |
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| A wonderful encounter with a friend from Germany who studied abroad in my part of the world. Now I get to enjoy hers for a year! |
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| Subtle evening rainbows on the walk to dinner |
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| my host sister and her cousin being silly überall |
More recently... this week! We had Herbstferien (Autumn break) which meant a week off from school. With my host mom and sister I went on vacation to visit Heilbronn to see my older host sister, Stuttgart, and a teeny city called Eckertsberga where my german Oma and Opa live. It was a blast! I really enjoyed driving though Thuringia (definitely the most Oregon like state of the German Bundeslands) and a bit of Bayern/Bavaria. I think that the way they speak in Bad Württemberg is really awesome. It's got a bit of the Bavarian 'r' roll and it's very fun to try to replicate. Highlights from Bad Württemberg included spending time with my awesome older host sister, failing to order correctly at more than a few restaurants (including Turkish food!!! Turkey seems to be to Germany as Mexico is to the United States in some respects. Mostly food, the cultural influence of past immigrants, and that it's a sought out vacation destination.) We also went to a Hamam, which is a Turkish sauna. It was built into the wine cellar of a building and I don't think I will ever feel that clean again in my life. If you are really curious about Hamam,
HERE is a news story on the one we went to. It's in German, so just deal with it. Here's some shots I took during vacation. No sauna pictures, es tut mir leid.
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| Stuttgart on a Saturday |
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| The view from on top of a castle |
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| the bird king of the castle |
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| the raptor show! |
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| the castle guard |
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| the tour guide |
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| at the beginning... |
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| half way up to the top... |
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| at the top! |
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| Castle Museum |
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| Kuchen back in Heilbronnmmmmmm. |
Closer to home, Halle has been my favorite city of them all so far on my exchange year. It's where you can meet a friend for ice cream by the statue of Händel as well as find incredible artwork on the sides of buildings to give you something new to think about.
Here is a photographic collection of SOME of the graffiti and building murals in Halle.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/gynti/albums/72157602899157778
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| City square, church, and statue. |
So, I hope that this blogpost was informative. It's taken me awhile to finish because I've been busy with so many other fun things that working on the computer for extended amounts of time hasn't been a top priority. Thank you for reading if you made it this far! Have a great day!
