Because I like to casually drop the fact that I am going to Germany into every conversation I ever have, I frequently get the questions "Where are you going in Germany?" "Why Germany?" "What's your mom going to do?" and, simply, "Why?'. Well, my inquisitive friends, I have (some) answers.
First, I have absolutely no idea where in Germany I'm going. A host family has to choose me, and, as some of my lovely companions have pointed out, it's possible that redheads aren't exactly desired things in Europe. As of now, I have no proof to dispute that.
Ah, Germany. The lovely, clean, beer-drinking, bratwurst-eating, and, most importantly, German-speaking country. The question that almost always follows "Why Germany?" is "Do you speak German?". The answer, sadly, is no. I have an app on my Ipod, and for about two months had a Germany tutor who I saw once a week. I do, however, speak French and Spanish. And English. Yet, barely a lick of the language of the land I'm going to be living in is inside my head, which is why people get this alarmed look on their faces, nodding violently so they can feel like they're covering up their shock and horrified surprise, all the while imagining me in a foreign land, most likely dead. But the CBYX scholarship is fantastic, and the only full ride I found to go anywhere. Later, I found scholarships to go to places like Morocco and India, which would have been awesome also, but by that point I was already pretty far into the process. I have always, for my whole life, desperately wanted to travel, and being an exchange student sounding extremely appealing. For example, I asked for a globe for Christmas. Not when I was seven. This year. Beat that coolness. So now I get to go to a foreign country, at no cost to myself, for an entire 10 months. That is why Germany takes the cake.
Now to the dear Bridget, aka my mom. You may think that people are being strange and nosy when they ask what she's going to do, but they have a valid point. My brother, Colin, is going off to college in North Carolina (Davidson, to be specific), I'm going across the ocean, and she and my dad are divorced, leaving her with two cats and a year of solitude. But she is a strong lady, and I had her blessing before I was even accepted into the program. I believe she once told me, "Don't use me as an excuse to not do something you want to do." She's a wise one, that Bridget. And I love her and will miss her more than I can imagine at the moment, where she is only a room away, but she's going to be here when I get back, and she knows I'll come back still her daughter.
Leaving friends and family and a town I've known practically my whole life while I'm sixteen and right in the middle of high school doesn't exactly seem sane. This has been brought to my attention countless times, from both those who wish I wouldn't go, and those who just want to make me cry. The two often overlap, like some sadistic Venn Diagram. Anyways, going in the first place was a long shot. I applied on a whim, wondering when I would hear anything, and everything just kept going and going until I was making my fateful Facebook update, alerting the internet of my success. I thought about it frequently. I thought about, mainly, what it would be like to be rejected from the program and stay. I'll be honest- I wasn't always extremely upset by that idea. I knew that I would always travel, someday and somehow, not necessarily during the four years of my life that people reminisce, or cringe, about. I couldn't even dream of affording the paid program to Germany, or any country, so if I didn't get the CBYX scholarship, it was a done deal. I wasn't going to reapply any other year, as I didn't want to miss my senior year, and taking a Gap Year just seemed silly to me when college is full of possibilities. And I love it here, as much as I complain. I love how I can walk down the street, and 95 percent of the time see someone I know, and stop in the shops and have all the store owners recognize me. I love my school (yes, I am that girl), with all of the classes and teacher and I have taken and met. I love my friends, this summer being especially full of fantastic people, which in a way makes it both harder and easier to go. Let me explain that. The harder part is understandable, something that is to be expected. By having such a great time with everybody, I will have much more to miss when I'm gone, and it's tempting just to stay and laugh with them. But it also makes it easier, because, had I not had these great experiences with these people, I might have been afraid of what I was leaving and coming back to. I am an excellent doubter, one who can elaborate a tiny situation until I end up a wreck of worry. Being confident in my friends allows me to leave them, knowing they'll have happy thoughts of me to keep with them, as I will have of them. Hopefully if any of them are reading this, it will guilt them out of thinking bad thoughts about me when I'm gone. This gracefully puts me into actually supporting my life-changing decision. I find few activities more thrilling than meeting new people. I relish the chance to talk to someone on the sidewalk or in a waterpark, sometimes at the expense of my mortified friends. All of them have are different, and I know that everyone knows that, but if you really think about it, it's sort of amazing. You could have a clone in Ireland or England or Germany, but you both would be totally different because of who you know and where you live. And when you met, it would be freaking fantastic, because you would be extremely interesting to the other you, given the fact that you were identical but totally different. I digress. I want to see the world and the people in it, and as much as I love Granville, I have pretty much run its source of fresh people (all 3,000 of them) dry, excluding the small children, who disturb me. Seeing new sights and eating new food and living a different life are all things that create my dream life, and I have the chance to live my dream. How many teenagers can say that? I have now reached that point of writing and tiredness where everything I write makes a small amount of sense until you actual read it, a scenario that is reflected quite frequently in my social life. I apologize that I spent a freakish amount of time and energy on certain topics, and almost none on others. Maybe next time. So I say, bis später.
