First Impressions

The Germans are firm believes in first impressions. People here live close together, brushing past, meeting once then disappearing off again, you are often defined by a few sentences and your outward appearance. I, however, find first impressions to be often less truthful or relevant than they appear, mostly because I think that I am not very good at them myself. But over the last two weeks, my first impressions of Germany seem a poor judgment indeed to the country that I am gradually adjusting to. I use the word adjusting to, because living in another country is like trying to find an identity all over again and negotiating your expectations with reality.  The best example is my host family; I had guessed that I would instantaneously bond with my host parents by simply being myself, but after these two weeks it has really yet to happen, sometimes I feel simply like a tenant living in their apartment. I tried not to compare my situation to other students (even though some may consider themselves more deserving of pity) or to the only other student that my host parents had for six weeks this summer, Jacob, whom I often wonder felt the same way. At first I blamed my host parents; they worked too much, only one of them spoke English, they were never eating dinner with me. Then I blamed myself; I wasn’t outgoing enough, I wasn’t making an effort. Yet, after 3 weeks I realize that is just the ways things are. Maybe I am a little more introverted when I can’t express myself like I am able to in America. Maybe Germans keep a little more of a personal bubble around them than I am used to. ( A friend of mine, who is fluent in German, told me that his host parents of 9 months still refer to him with the formal ‘you’ in German.) As such my experience with culture shock, despite it only being three weeks, has led me to believe a few things. This semester isn’t about what I though it was about. You hear people say that it was a “great experience”, does that mean it was 3 months of fun and wonderful times? For mean life in Germany is just like life everywhere else; it’s boring, it’s funny, it’s tiring, it’s sad, it’s exhilarating, it’s depressing, that’s what life is, everywhere. The moment I realized that was the moment I felt different about my time here. I used to see Europe as a place where living would be so much better than living in the States. But only after three weeks, after meeting Bulgarians, Kenyans, Turks, Irishmen, and the French, the hard truth is life is the not better here than in America, it’s just different, that’s all. Anyways, that was a philosophical tangent (after only 3 weeks nonetheless!)