It has been quite a while since I
have written. During that time, I have moved again, back to Berlin, back to
Spandau, forged new friendships, enrolled in college, and graduated from high
school. I have also had a vast amount of time to think about the impending
future, how I will live my life going forward, and what I have learned over the
course of this year.
That introduction was written in July, and the post never
finished. Over the course of my year in Germany, I became disillusioned with
some of the aspects of blogging about an exchange. Many of the experiences that
you have are so deeply personal, that talking about them on the internet feels
wrong. Mentions of your friends are without reference for the vast majority of
readers, events are irrelevant and meaningless to all but you, and perhaps,
most of all, the feelings and emotions of that time are too great and personal to be
properly described by mere words.
Where to begin?...
After Christmas, I moved to Berlin, a few kilometers from where
this story began in September of 2014. I went to the same school, the Bertolt
Brecht Oberschule. I stayed there for the rest of my time in Germany. I cannot
thank my host family enough for that. Despite the closed bathroom window, house
overcrowding, and sport ineptitude on my part, everybody made it through. I
think. I hope. During those final six months, so much happened.
During January and February I spent a lot of time getting to know
Berlin and its environs again. At the end of March, we had Halbzeit Camp in
Hamburg. It was nearly five days of activities with the other AFS CBYXers. We
talked about how to improve the time going forward, and about what had happened
in the previous six months.
My girlfriend and I traveled fairly extensively around Germany and
the countries bordering Germany to the east. Over Easter weekend we went to
London, St Andrews, Edinburgh, and Dublin.
Eventually, End of Stay camp came. It is in Berlin, and AFS
was in a hostel in Mitte. The days were packed almost completely full of
activities. The highlight of the week was Bundestag day, where we went to the
Bundestag and the Kanzlerei. Merkel even came and spoke to us.
After that, the end came quickly. On July 1st, I
said goodbye to my girlfriend for the last time for months, a few days before
she left for Frankfurt. On the Fourth of July I left Berlin with the rest of
the Berlin-area Americans for the final time. The Komittee director came to see
us off. My host brother and two of my friends came as well, to see off the
train. When we got to Frankfurt, I almost immediately saw my best friend from
Munich again. The weather dampened the
mood, though. It was a little over 100 degrees Fahrenheit outside. The next
morning, after a nearly sleepless night, we made it to the Frankfurt am Mein
airport. The plane left on time, and not much was said during the flight. At
the airport, the non-CBYX students left with their families and the CBYX
students were taken to the same hotel where our journey started. We did some of
the workshops before being let out to watch the US Women’s soccer team play in
the world cup. The next day, we had our graduation ceremony, and without much
fanfare were picked up by our families.
It did not really sink in at the time, but those last days
signaled the end of an era. For me, those were the last days without
responsibility of some kind, the last days of a yearlong dream. A dream, that
despite all of the hard times, you wish you could go back and repeat again and
again. That excitement on the bus to the airport in September will never be
repeated again. That wondrous feeling of falling headfirst into the unknown of
exchange will never come again. And that is perhaps why it is so valuable.
Those days were a finite resource. What sometimes seems awful about it though,
is that it is only now that those days are appreciated for everything that they
were.
It is with those thoughts in mind that this chapter of my
life is closed. The journey though, has not ended, or even slowed. My time in
college will take me across the globe, into all sorts of new unknowns and
experiences. This time, however, I hope I have learned to appreciate them.
I have started a new blog for my time in college at: http://inmotioneternal.blogspot.com/
Hopefully, I will actually update it this time. It will be
about my time and travels as a member of the Inaugural Class at the Minerva
Schools at KGI.
