The first few weeks of my exchange has been such a journey. The first weeks were definitely difficult for me. Having to completely leave everything behind and being somewhere where everything was new was a lot harder than I thought it would be. Many days I would think back to when I was at home and everything felt normal and I was comfortable. I will say it wasn’t until recently that I started becoming more comfortable here. Meeting so many people has been so much fun. I feel so lucky that I have been able to see so many different places.

So far my favorite places I’ve visited is a small town in France called Riquewihr. I also got to experience staying in a small cottage in the mountains with my host grandparents. It honestly felt so unreal because I have never experienced anything like that. It was so peaceful and our backyard was a gorgeous view of the mountains. I think the most help to me so far with getting more comfortable in my host country is talking to other exchange students. We are both going through the same experience and being able to openly share our struggles and our happy moments has really helped.

I have also made a lot of friends at school. All of my classmates have been so helpful in letting me know what’s going on in class, helping me get around the school (we have a really big campus), and just being kind to me. I would be so lost without their help. Most of the time I don’t know what’s going on in class but it’s still really cool to see how differently the school systems works compared to the US. In my school our schedules are different each day. One day I could have a class from 7:45 until 4:50 and another day I could have a class from 8:30 to 1:00. But each day is very tiring. Also throughout the day we get an hour or two to have a break. During this time you can walk around the city, grab some food at the train station, go to the library and study, a lot of my friends even go home during this time and come back later for the next class. I think that was a very big culture shock for me because in the US we are always in school.

I would say though that school and just being in public has really helped me improve with my German. There are still many things I have to work on like the Der, Die, and Das, which can get be very annoying sometimes, but overall compared to how my German used to be I think it has definitely improved. I am also proud to say that I can read in German which I used to not be able to do at all. I can’t believe that’s it’s already been one month and I’m halfway through the second. Time is really flying by but I’m so grateful for all the things I have already been able to experience while here.