Things I´ve learned from being an exchange student

Hi guys!

As you probably already realized, this is going to be my first post in english, so please don´t judge me! Even though I´ve already been here since 7 months my listening skills are still way better than my writing skills. At the moment I´m kind of stucked with my English. I can´t really see any further improvements. Even though people tell me my English is quite good, I´m not satisfied yet. I want my English to be even better. Well, I have four more months. 
And one thing I´ve learned from this exchange is that things are going to be different. Way different than you´ve ever expected them to be! Maybe the Anerican high school spirit is not exactly like in the movies, maybe it´s not going to be the "best year of your life", and maybe your language skills are still not perfect at the end of the year. But that´s okay. Because you also learn how to deal with it. And that only makes you stronger.

Another thing I´ve learned is that time flies sooooo fast. If I look back, I can´t belive that it´s already been a year since I got my placement, or since I went to this exchange student meeting in Karlsruhe. Sometimes time even gets a little bit scary. I don´t wanna think about how it´s going to be to say "goodbye" to all this great people I met, and to my american life. I´m not going to be "one of the exchange stundents" anymore... And I´ll probably have do deal with reverse culture shock. After going through culture shock once, I´m not really looking forward to that.

But that´s just one more essential part of being an exchange student. Some students have an extreme culture shock and some barely notice that they are going to a culture shock at all. To be honest, my culture shock was pretty hard. While going trough this emotional roller coaster there was only one thought in my mind : everything is better in Germany! Well, now I have to say that that´s simply not the truth. It´s not better, it´s not worse, it´s different.

 

Being so far away from my natural parents, my friends and my own culture made me think a lot about myself and Germany. I noticed that living abroad not only teach you a lot about the culture in your host country but also about your own culture. I´ve probably learned more about the German culture in one year than in all the years before! And I´m still learning... 

But I also learned a lot about myself. Being basically alone in a country on the other side of the world taught me so much. I can´t even express it in words. But I know that I´m gonna benefit from this experience my entire life!

Well, I hope you liked my post. It may be not that long like the other post I´ve published, but I hope I could express myself as good as in German :)

See y´all soon,
Carla♥