Germany was a pretty fraught year, if I'm honest. Learned a lot. Did become fluent in German, which of course was what my aim was as a bright eyed energetic teenager, later majored in German in university (along with a visual arts second major). Studied abroad twice in Germany while in unversity. Now I'm living and working in Kawasaki, Japan.
It's a shame I never finished my thougths about living in Germany while I was there. It might have been a good resource for teenagers looking to move abroad while getting information from a source they might consider reliable. I can't summarize everything that happened while I was living in Germany, but I can sum some of it up as succinctly as possible:
1) School
I attended a Gymansium in Stralsund during my year in Germany, class 10B (I still remember!), and spoke very little German when I first attended. It was difficult to understand anything at the beginning, of course, and my comprehension improved relatively slowly (although learning Japanese now, it feels like it came pretty quickly now ;-) ). I think I said very little (if anything!) in any of my classes. I know my teachers kinda gave up and decided not to ask me questions for the most part.
One thing, on retrospect, that did interest me and that I enjoyed doing, was talking in my English class, and really not necessarily because it was interesting (although it was). The teacher, Frau Jungnickel (and if, by absolutely any chance, you're reading this, Frau Jungnickel, then I hope you and your husband are doing really well and thank you for being so supportive of me), seemed to stick her neck out for me on more than a couple of occasions. It was likely thanks to her that I integrated into the classroom as well as I did. It's DEFINITELY thanks to her that I made my best friend out there. Dr Franka, you're the best!
I made a wonderful friend, as I mentioned, someone I'm to this day very close to and talk to regularly -- in August of 2019, actually, we spent a little over a week together in Thailand. Prior to that we hung out in London for a week in 2015. My goal is to see her in less than four years in the future, hahaha. Franka took me in as a sister from day one. I remember she approached me first and we really hit it off. Were it not for Franka, there is a zero percent chance I would have stayed in Germany and a zero percent chance I would have stayed with my host family as long as I did.
School was challenging, and my grades weren't great, but I passed and I managed to survive what was my first year back in a school setting since I was in fifth grade.
2) Host family
Like any teenager in this situation, I didn't give my host family enough credit. I think you have to be absolutely insane, or have hearts of pure gold, to take in a teenager from a foreign country (especially America!) for a year. My host family gave me a room to myself, helped me get to grips with the local area, tried very very hard to integrate me into their family, were patient with my limited German, understanded when I needed hours to myself, alone, and dealt with... the weird person I was at 17.
They had their issues, but they were small issues, and they kept me for the full year. We were a perfect match? No... but I wasn't a very giving person at 17, was used to a completely different lifestyle, and had many (not so small) issues myself. They were good people. They put up with a lot. We're not in contact, but I'm still friends with my host brother on Facebook and he contacted me on Skype a few years ago to talk. I hope they're all succeeding.
3) Germany
I lived in Germany for a year and some chump change (I did a second exchange year after the first one that was challenging in its own regard and I made a lot of worse mistakes there. I'll talk about it in a separate post, maybe). I studied abroad there twice in university. Shit, I majored in German. One of my best friends on the planet is German. My German is more or less fluent and I can understand German news broadcasts. I read Nietzsche and Adorno in the original text in university.
I hated Germany. Or, hate is a strong word -- but it stands that I have very intense emotions when it comes to Germany and some of the things that happened there. It really changed me as a person, at least in the long run.
I do think if I hadn't lived there as long as I had that there would have been no chance that I would have survived in Japan as long as I have (a year and eight months now -- crazy that it's already been that long!). I also think Germany made me a better person in many ways. I would also never live through some of what I experienced in Germany ever again. That's not to say it was bad -- it wasn't. But it was a period of growth, and growth is painful.
If I could return on my own terms -- no studying, nothing but cultural experience and hanging around Berlin, for example -- I might have a fantastic time. But is the draw really there? No.
Something that I can sense in my previous posts but that I never said outright, nor would I have said outright, is that Germany was never my top choice destination. As evidenced from perhaps the first post on this blog, I wanted to learn Swedish and go to Sweden. Germany was just the option I felt obliged to do because I experienced pressure from my parents to a certain extent and also because I was so eager to -- to get out of the house, I guess, to live my own life, and to experience a new culture. But I don't know if I ever consciously knew what I was going to get into. I think most of the allure came from being away from home. My sister attended a prestigious boarding school in Masschussets when she was 14. I felt really jealous but didn't know how to express it. And I come from a very cushy home life, good parents who spoiled me. Possibly sheltered, but cozy.
In any case, Germany shaped me in ways I couldn't have really known at the time. I credit it to living in Japan, as I mentioned, and I think, consciously or unconsciously, it will likely continue to influence the choices I make in my life.
