A year ago today, I was doing pretty much exactly what I'm doing now--packing up all my things, moving out, and saying goodbye to my friends who were still in Ithaca. I graduated in the middle of May, and stuck around in the city for an extra month since I still had some time on my lease. I used it to unwind and relax from the crazy whirlwind that had been the weeks and months leading up to graduation. I drank a lot of coffee, spent a lot of time outside just enjoying Ithaca in the summer, and said a proper goodbye to all of the people and places I had felt so connected with for the past four years.
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| Skipping rocks at Third Dam Gorge in Ithaca. |
And here I am again, in the middle of packing and saying goodbye to Hamburg in my head. It always surprises me how quickly the atmosphere of a room can change. Take down a couple posters, bring down some books from a bookshelf, empty a dresser, and all of a sudden your apartment changes from a place where you live to a place where you lived. Shocking how the things and places you call home can have such a temporary nature to them.
It's all been a fantastic, wonderful time, but it has now come to it's inevitable end. What to say about the experience now that I'm at the end of it? Could I even begin to capture all of the things I've learned and done and seen in the past ten months? Find some way to bring it to a pretty, neat conclusion? I guess the easiest, most accurate way to summarize it all is also one of the shortest: it changed me. This year in Germany has changed me in so many different ways that it's hard for me to even express it or put it into words.
And when I say "change" I don't mean some nice, lovely, gradual process of personal discovery and self-improvement. At the very beginning this experience came up and slapped me in the face and demanded my whole and undivided attention. Right from the start I was dropped into an incredibly difficult position: I was in a new city on the other side of the world, with no friends or family, no apartment, a rudimentary and rusty grasp of the language, and a new job for which I'd had about two-and-a-half days of orientation.
Not only that, but the school itself was yet another hurdle to overcome: a so called integrated school, with a huge number of students with social, behavioral, and educational issues, and an 80% immigrant population. In one of my first periods at the school I unintentionally started a quasi-race fight between a group of Turks and Germans in a 10'th grade class. What had started the fight? A student asked what my favorite thing about Germany is, and, for lack of a better answer, I told her that "Döner," a Turkish kebab, was my favorite thing. Another Turkish student raised her had and wanted to make sure that I knew that Döner was a Turkish invention, not a German one, which started up all sorts of mean and offensive yelling from the Germans on the other side of the classroom. I remember taking the bus home that day and wondering what the hell I'd gotten myself into.
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| One of the main buildings on the school campus. |
This, as you can imagine, was incredibly overwhelming. Finding my footing in Hamburg was like trying to run in sneakers across a skating rink covered in wet ice. For a solid month I had no idea what the hell I was doing, and each setback--each time I lost my traction on the ice and face planted--hit me so hard psychologically.
It's so interesting looking back at the beginning and reading posts like
this and
this, and remembering what it was like. For a while it was incredibly hard; coming over here and getting myself started in Hamburg was one of the most difficult things I've ever done with my life. But after a while the strangeness and newness started to fade away, and Hamburg transformed from a city where I felt displaced and lonely and uncomfortable to a place where I feel really, really at home. It's all a process of adjustment I guess. After a prolonged and aggravating search, I finally found a place to live after a few weeks, and even got used to the 1:30 commute to my school. I worked as hard as I could to speak and read as much German as I could, and progressed to a level I wouldn't have dreamed possible at the beginning of the year. After coming to accept that the students were going to challenge me I started learning how to deal with them, and came to really enjoy going to school. And, after a while, Hamburg changed from a city full of strangers to a city full of friends (corny sentence, I know, but it's true).
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| Loic's birthday party in our living room. |
In fact, it barely feels right to have written a post like this, considering where I am nowadays. Writing about all the difficulties I had doesn't really feel like an appropriate way to represent the year since they lasted for such a short time, but the effect that all of those challenges had ended up being the point of the experience in the end. Had I never come out here--never transplanted myself into this place and undergone all of the stress and pain of adjustment that came along with it--then I would have never changed in the ways I have, never grown. I am such a different person because of it all, and that will be the most valuable thing I take away from these ten months.
I'm sad to finally come to the end of this year, but I cannot imagine it turning out better than it did. So, I'd like to say thanks to everyone who helped to make it so good: the Fulbright Commission for always being available to answer my questions and for offering me the chance to have this experience; my friends and family back home for always providing me support and encouragement; the Ketels, my host family, for providing such amazing support for me during my first few weeks here; my mentor and my colleagues at school for being so helpful in integrating me into the school and teaching me how to teach; my landlady for giving me a place to stay and always being around to chat in the afternoons; all of the bartenders in the Sternschanze and the Kiez; whoever invented the Franzbrötchen and Mexikaner; and, finally, every single person I met and befriended while I was over here--you made this year what it was, and I am incredibly grateful to have shared it with you.
And that, as they say, is that. I'll leave you with a few of my favorite photos of the year, and say thank you for reading! I enjoyed writing as much as you enjoyed following along.
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In the London Eye with a group of the eight graders who went
along on the class trip. |
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Reading a story to one of my teachers' kids. I celebrated
Christmas Eve with them. |
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John, Me, Karl, another Fulbrighter, Brendan, and Kiersten.
Sitting on the fountain in Alexanderplatz during the Fulbright
Conference in March. |
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| Sunset in Katharinenheerd, where I celebrated Easter with the Ketels. |
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| Thanksgiving dinner at Karl's place. |
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| Spring on the Alster. |
