Hello everyone! Just got back to my room after seeing my wonderful mother off at the airport. I was really sad to see her go and it hit me more on the train ride home that it did in the airport watching her go past the security gates and looking around for English directions on the walls and signs. And thinking about her leaving has got, of course, me thinking about how three weeks from tomorrow I'll be carrying all my heavy stuff this time and it'll be my turn to stand in line for hours to get my boarding passes. But I try not to dwell on it to much. I got a pretty relaxed weekend ahead and then next weekend is Hamburg and then the last weekend I have my last trip which will be to Budapest. Some might think 21 days is alot, but considering how long ive been here and how much time has already sped by 21 days seems like half a week left. But I told my mom today how I really do miss home, and how I love Germany and never will forget my time here, but I think there's a time and a place for everything, and I gotta say having so little time before I do go home, I'm getting anxious and eager. And of course with the little time we have left Germany is finally starting to warm up after what seemed like a decade of a mini ice age. School is also winding down cause after tomorrow I have only 2 more class meetings and then schools out! Now I know most of you must be asking yourself "Neal, what sort of exams or finals do you have to deal with over here in Germany" and that's a very simple question. Now what im about to say may cause a bit of jealous rage in maybe more of the student population of my readers, but as for my finals I merely have to write a 2 page, single space, paper on a certain product in a reading and how it contributes to globalization AND for my other final I only need to read the three readings we wont be here for and meet with the professor for a small oral exam. Ill pause to let that sink in..... so I gotta say one thing Germany hasn't given me is a lot of stress which is nice. But one things for sure is that Germany really has given me more than I could of possibly imagined. Just seeing it on my moms face when she first went to all the places we would go. Just the awe stricken, "Am I dreaming" face. I smile cause that was the exact same feeling I had when I got here. I would wake up in the morning and looking around forgetting that I'm not in my room at home and then having to remind myself more than once during the day that I was in fact in a different country and will be for quite awhile. Its weird thinking about the steps in the study abroad experience and thinking back to my first day here then my first month then second and now today it being 3 months and 1 day exactly since I left Wisconsin for this journey. It really is one of those milestones that are such a huge part of your life, but you don't realize the scale of it until its almost over. Sure 3 months ago I knew I was on a plane to Germany, but that wasn't even scratching the surface of the surface. The saying its only the tip of the ice burg doesn't really suffice. Its more like me being on the plane was only a snowflake on top of the ice burg. Even though im god awful at updating this thing, I'm really glad I got to be able to share all these moments with all of my readers, and also a good way for me to document so that I can go back in later years and read about these moments and these memories. But something like this, the fact that I never thought I'd be here, kind of keeps me on my toes because who knows what kind of other surprises are ahead of me. Who knows if ill be somewhere else or having some other experience that half way through or towards the end of it realizing this again is one of those milestones. I thank God to be able to have my mom out to visit me even though 13 days with her seemed like it was 13 hours and we both felt it. And now that she, as I type this, is on her way home, I hope that she had as much fun as I did with her and seeing all that I had to show in Germany. It may not be over, but already I know it will always be something I look back on and will always be a defining moment in my life, just when you think you know everything about yourself you turn the page and realize just how wrong you are and how there is so much more to learn.
Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young. - Henry Ford
No comments:
Post a Comment