I am back!
Hello : )
as you already know I am back in Germany now for two months. I had a lot of time to reflect all the things that happened during my exchange year and to settle back into my “German” life. You may think it´s easy to come back and be the old person – it´s not. Being so far away from home you will change – your interests, organization, goals … – and so will your friends and family have new things they are interested in. It needs some time to come back and understand what happened, or why they are talking about something. Most of the time I was just confused about what was going on.
For the first few weeks my life was surreal for me; I couldn´t believe that I am back in Germany – I was constantly answering in English or not responding to questions, so that people thought they need to talk in English to me. Honestly I think I was a mess! I had no plan from anything and was just living my life. For two weeks I went on vacation to Austria where we rode the bicycle along the River “Danube”. The beautiful landscapes of Austria impressed me. Back in Leipzig (my hometown) I was starting an internship at an architecture office. I wanted to try out things and to do this an internship seemed to be perfect. Also I was able to get a normal rhythm in my day – and I was not up till early in the morning and than super tired when I had to get up.All these things helped me to come back softly and not being hit by all in one day seemed to be a good way for me.
As I am writing here I constantly recognize how I try not to write about it but now it´s time:
“I miss my American friends and family!”
Everyone who welcomed me during this adventure THANK YOU!
It is not easy to know that there is a six hour time differences between me and my friends. I cannot just text them that they should pick me up in a little bit to do something or we can not go out for dinner anymore. Before heading off to the US I thought this will never happen but it is. My wish is to be back there in a place I just got to know a year ago, and I want to hang out with all those amazing people – the ones who helped me out or just talked with me a few times. There are so many things I want to try – things that I am not able to do back here in Germany, but also I am happy that I was able to try activities like choir, basketball or softball. It was a pleasure for me taking part in a photography class and even talking in English the whole time was one! I miss being surrounded by native English speakers! The first thing I was surprised of in Germany – was that people here are talking in German and that they are able to understand when I am talking in German. As I visited Berlin I was happy to have a bunch of people there speaking English so I started to feel happy again. Constantly thinking about what to say is hard and stresses a lot – for me as I am thinking in English most of the time – I start to plan my conversion in every detail in English until I recognize last minute the person I want to talk to isn´t able to understand.
I want to say thank you to everyone who made my stay possible and who helped me through hard times. A special thank you goes to my host family for letting me be a part of their life; for driving this annoying exchange student everywhere – I know it was not always easy to adjust but I was happy that I got to go through this adventure with you. I miss always having someone home even only two dogs and a cat, but it made me feel save. Having at least one person in my age always around was an experience I wouldn´t wanted to miss – thank you to my three host siblings Lindsay, Lucas and Logan. Besides my family I really miss my friends and I don´t know how many times and hours I skyped with Maddee who always motivates me and just listens to everything that´s going on in my mind. I hope so much that we will see each other again and I think there is no one else that would be a better person to chat with at lunch or at choir. As much as I miss Maddee I also miss Ali – thank you for opening up, thank you for driving, thank you for sharing your life, thank you for always forget everything, thank you for listening, thank you for motivating me with your amazing voice, thank you for making me laugh, thank you for … I could continue this list with many more thank you for I want to say but mostly I want to thank you for being my friend!
I obviously do not want to close this chapter! In over one year so many things changed my life; I got a more unique identity and was able to find out more things about me. Being able to start this blog as a way to share my life with a community is an amazing gift I want to continue; and I hope you all support me with this. Now that I am apart from my “American” family and friends this is my way of sharing what I do here. I do not want to say good bye; I want to say hello! Hello to everyone who just started to read my blog; to everyone who will continue reading and to everyone who wants to read about my adventures in whatever part of the world!
HELLO to all of you! and THANK YOU for your support!
Deu.
Hi – in diesem Beitrag habe ich mich vor allem an meine amerikanischen Freunde und Bekannte gerichtet. Es geht darum, dass ich das Kapitel Auslandsjahr abschließe, damit rede ich nicht von davon zu vergessen aber ich kann mich selber nicht mehr als “Ich bin eine Austauschschülerin” bezeichnen, denn “Ich bin jetzt Alumni” trifft es besser. Viele neue Austauschschüler fliegen in diesen Tagen in das Abenteuer ihres Lebens und werden sehr vieles neues erleben. Für mich jedoch war es an der Zeit in mein “deutsches” Leben zurück zu kehren – im Alltag merke ich immer noch wie mich das Jahr verändert hat und wie ich zum Beispiel auf Englisch denke. Neben vielen Verwunderungen kam ich erst gar nicht damit klar, dass die Menschen in Deutschland Deutsch sprechen. Es war eine Umgewöhnung dies zu akzeptieren und nicht jedes mal zusammen zufahren wenn jemand einen auf Deutsch ansprach – oftmals muss ich wohl so schrecklich geschaut haben, dass die Menschen den Satz/die Frage dann gleich noch einmal auf Englisch wiederholt haben. Ich habe mich in diesem Beitrag auch bei meiner Gastfamilie und meinen Freunden für ihre Unterstützung und Freundlichkeit bedankt.
Da ich dieses Kapitel ungern abschließe – denn es hat mein Leben verändert und mich “mich” gemacht – möchte ich diesen Blog weiterführen. Ich möchte heute nicht “Auf Wiedersehen” sagen, sondern “Hallo”! Hallo zu all denen die jetzt erst begonnen haben den Blog zu lesen, zu denen die weiter lesen werden und zu denen die in meinen Berichten rumstöbern wollen.
HALLO an euch alle! und DANKE für eure Unterstützung!
xoxo Nike
Follow me on…
Instagram: habekl
Snapchat: hannibee070201
Bloglovin: Follow my blog with Bloglovin
camera: Canon EOS 700D
