I suppose it’s time for an update,
but it really feels like not much has changed! Everything has just gotten
easier. I’m still not anywhere near fluent, but school is insanely better than
it was before. I often understand what the teachers are saying and I am now
able to have full conversations in German. I’m at the point where I barely
speak any English, even in my English class and Bilingual History class all my
conversations with my classmates are in German. I catch myself thinking in
German, and sometimes have the occasional dream auf Deutsch. My German classes
are still pretty confusing, but I wrote my first test this last week in one of
them. Brace yourselves; it’s a real thriller. A one-page story based off of
some German newspaper article, about a cat, in Japan, who after going hunting
for a sparrow found a plastic bag, which contained 12,000 Yen. It will most definitely be interesting to see
just what my teacher has to say about it!
Swim teams going well, I usually go
a few times a week and am yelled at for talking too much while I should be
swimming. There are just some things that will never change…
Being an exchange student makes you
really consider life and force you to change your view on the world. Now being
almost three months in, and two months in with my host family, I can see just
how much this trip has changed me and how much I still have to go. At home, I
am pretty much always talking; where as I tend to be more quiet here. It’s
definitely a general exchange student thing, and is lessening up as my German
vocabulary expands. But I cannot express enough what it does to a person when
they are forced to be quiet constantly. I cannot explain it. It just, makes you
change your look on life. It challenges you to see things the way you did
before and consider what is really right and wrong, not just what you were
taught as a child. I honestly can’t even remember who I was before compared to
who I am now. I’ll go and read an essay I wrote only a year or so ago, and
think to myself, how could I have looked at the world that way? I also think
about things I thought were hard before, and realize what a breeze they were
when I had a full grasp on the language.
Let’s see, what else is going on?
Last weekend I went on a bike ride with my host dad for a few hours to a nearby
city called Essen, and despite the cold and rainy ending, it was really
beautiful. I went to see Skyfall last Wednesday with my host sister and a few
friends, and it was really hilarious because I thought I understood the whole
movie and was later told by Valerie that really it had this entire twisted plot
that I had no clue about the entire time. Last night I went to this clubbing
disco event, and that was sweet too! Pretty big difference from The Grizzly Rose…
;)
And sooner than later it will be my
birthday! I wouldn’t say that it feels like times going by super fast, but it’s
crazy just how far into this exchange I am already.
