Germany – Page 11 – Valpo Voyager

Category: Germany (page 11 of 26)

In Ulm und um Ulm und um Ulm herum

September 22, 2014 / katherineackerman / 0 Comments

So, this past week my class took a week-long trip to the small town of Blaubeuren, just outside of Ulm. Blaubeuren is adorable and famous for it’s blue pond created by a chemical reaction between lime and carbon dioxide and the poem about it written by Eduard Mölrike. It was a great week filled with German learning, hiking and many, many excursions. I had one of those coming full circle experiences because I visited a city for the second time in my life. That city, as shown by the three times it appears in the title of this post, is Ulm. Ulm is the home of the world’s tallest church tower, which I have now had the pleasure of climbing not only once, but twice. It was in fact the topic of my admission essay to Valpo, about however the world seems to be getting smaller and smaller, there are always surprising new things to learn as we go (that is a summary, the original was a very extended metaphor made worse by the fact that I had been abstaining from the English language– something which I think can be made clear is happening again based on the almost 3 lines that make up this sentence).

Above: Ulm ca. 2011 I’m proud to say that I got almost the exact same shot. You’ll note the subtle differences to the below shot of the Danube ca. 2014

One of the things that surprised me most was the way that my teacher described the tower. The Ulm Münster as it’s called was funded by the people of Ulm. The city itself was not very clean, being there was no modern sewage system at the time it was built and the church could house almost 5 times the number of people than the population of Ulm itself. For these people, my teacher said, coming to the Münster was like coming to heaven. It was clean, it was quiet, there was room to spare. Going back there now reminds me of how much framing influences how we perceive the world around us. Now, in a world filled with images, music and modern sewage, the Münster does not seem like quite such an astounding building, but at the time it was built, it was really one of the greatest feats of its time. And the same thing goes for everything that we see in life, the more that we see, the more that we have to compare it too, and the more we can learn about the reasons why things are the way that they are in the world.

Otherwise I have been doing my best to “live into” my new home, as one would say in German. I’ve been trying to think of ways to decorate my room and cook for myself to make my apartment more like home. Recently the addition of a new roommate from Spain has made it feel a lot more lived-in than before. We’ve also been working on the first project for my German class. My topic is about the local dialect called Schwäbisch, which I have turned out to be surprising good at pronouncing. Although many people find dialects to be a sign of simple mindedness, I find them totally fascinating. They give language personality and are proof of socio-linguistic developmental patterns that created many smaller pockets of dialects as opposed to one homogeneous language.

One of the other things that I’ve noticed most about the German language is that although I understand most of what’s being said, some of the subtleties of German body language haven’t necessarily been totally clear to me. Instead of using a wide range of facial expressions or a drastic change in tone, Germans like to change the structure of their sentences or throw in extra words in order to reveal their true emotions. When my teacher talked about this in class, I have to admit that something clicked in my mind. It brought back countless memories of me feeling like I was somehow unable to achieve the cool, collected calm that seems to permeate German culture. I think it might take a while before I can master the art of showing emotion verbally, but it will certainly be a challenge that I’m willing to take on. Hopefully that will make my German that much less frantic-sounding and more authentic.

And so I am off to go practice speaking without moving my face so much!

Bis bald!

Gearing Up for Berlin and Travel Season

Waiting for the bus.

This last week was a little on the quiet side. Went to class, ate more chocolate croissants, attempted to say more than “Ein. Brelzen.” to the very nice bakery ladies, and polished off my third jar of Nutella. (It actually is better in Europe. The chocolate to hazelnut ratio is perfection, and the smoothness is reminiscent of Wynton Marsalis’ patter at the BBC proms. I feel for you who have never experienced the wonderfulness of European Nutella.) But a nice, calm week is probably the best kind of week to have right now, as Friday begins our whirlwind of class traveling on a train headed for Berlin.

Yes, I color-code my travel maps. Although not entirely consistently.

In honor of our season of traveling, Brittany and I began our travel map, pinned with places we’re going and hope to go. The list is long, but between the map and the realization that Italy is a lot closer that we thought, our plans are coming along quite nicely. In addition to Berlin, we’re headed to Hamburg and Köln (Cologne) in the next couple of weeks. Don’t worry, I will post pictures of it all. I will also figure out how the post works again so I can send all the people I said I would send stuff a postcard. I promise.

We found this walking to the train in Reutlingen. I think it’s a coffee table. I also think it’s for sale.

Oh, I forgot something for my summary of the week’s events… Tübingen! This university town is 10 minutes west of Reutlingen, is home to one of Germany’s oldest museums, and sits on the Neckar River. It’s a very pretty and very vertical town. We briefly toured the downtown and the castle with our Art History professor, who’s lived in Tübingen for at least thirty years. We also got to go on a boat ride on the Neckar. It’s not that big, as rivers go- compared to the Mississippi, Illinois, or Mackanac, it’s a mild-mannered stream- but that made it an even better choice for punting, in which the boat is moved by digging a long stick into the bed of the river and pushing the boat forward. Our punter (the guy that makes the boat move) was also a member of one of the university teams for the annual punting race up and down the Neckar. According to our professor, the winners throw a huge party, and the losers have to drink castor oil. Our boatman’s team got 5th out of 30-ish last year.

The beautiful Neckar, and the punter.

While we were there, we enjoyed a dinner at the Neckarmüller, a microbrewery right on the river. We ate with everybody associated with the Valpo program in Germany, even including the retired language professor from the start of the Valpo program here, almost 50 years ago.

Kaitlyn and Katie, two non-Reutlingen Valpo students in Germany, enjoying the sunshine on the Neckar

That was Sunday, and it was delightful. But what will Berlin bring? You have to check back next week to see…

Just some good old sitting on the wall next to the river.

Tübingen, bist du gar so hügelig?

September 10, 2014 / katherineackerman / 0 Comments

After having been in Tübingen for a few days now, I have come to love the city an its charming atmosphere as well as the other Austauschstudenten in my intensive German course.

I’m living in a so-called student city, which is basically a bunch of dorms that are all located in an area that no car can reach on top of a hill (all though the car bit isn’t exactly true, it best describes the feel of the area). My Wohngemeinschaft (WG) is made up of two hallways, each with three rooms and a bathroom that are connected by a kitchen, shared amongst 6 people. It’s really a lovely building and seems to have been recently renovated. What I really like about the student housing here is the fact that there are so many windows, each of which can be fully opened and are paired with the ever-charming Rolladen. Rolladen are a special type of blind that are attached to the outside of the window and can be changed to either block out the light, which make them great if your room is next to a street lamp. I’m in a single which is the norm here in Germany, and nice because I can go to bed as early or late as I want (lately it’s been rather early, since I’m still suffering slightly from the effects of jetlag, although much less so than when I first got here).

Every day, I take the bus down the hill and into town to the university, where I have two classes to help me improve my German. One is based mostly on grammar and the other on overall understanding. I’m actually quite glad to have the grammar course, because we’ve been working on tenses like Futur I and Futur II that I haven’t reviewed in a while and doing really specific things like practicing pronouncing vowels with our mouths open at the right distance, which helps to immensely improve accents. Everyone in the course is required to speak German with each other and this has been working perfectly EVEN OUTSIDE OF CLASS!!! Anyone who knows me, could probably automatically recognize that this has been a long-standing dream of mine, to be surrounded by other people who want nothing other than to speak German (which admittedly comes true at my job during the summer, but seeing this outside the confines of Waldsee is somehow really surprising anyway). The second class is also fun, but I’m really loving the grammar bit.

I have also come to know a bit about the city. There is a gorgeous mix of old and new buildings, although in the main part of the city, the historic tends to be the best. It is also an incredibly green city. Everywhere you go there is a gorgeous view of the nearby mountains, which are currently a deep green color, meaning that soon they will turn brilliant orange (or at least I’m counting on that, but based on how many times I’ve heard discussion of climate change so far, they may stay green the whole year). On every street there are bike paths, which are surprisingly not separated from the pedestrian sidewalk (I can attest that I have almost been run-over on a number of occasions). But everything is accessible by foot, even-supposedly- the student village that I live in, although I haven’t been able to get up early enough to try it out. The famous hills that I have heard so much about haven’t gotten to me yet, but I do suppose however that on the planned hiking excursion listed in my German course syllabus will be the true test of the nature of Tübingen’s geography.

Bis Bald!

The Narrowest Street in the World and a Prussian Prince

September 7, 2014 / Katie Rinda / 0 Comments

Week Two in Reutlingen

Berg Hohenzollern, sitting above the Swabian Alps

After the exciting jet lag recovery, soccer game watching, and chocolate croissant eating events of the first week, I spent most of week two familiarizing myself with my new hometown. We found the real grocery store, which was exciting. More exciting was our tour of the Stadtmitte with a native Reutlingener, including a visit to the narrowest street in the world: Spreuerhofstraße!

Me at the end of the narrowest street in the world

To further aquaint ourselves with Reutlingen, we also went to the Heimat Museum, which is devoted to the city and some of the surrounding area. It has artifacts from the Middle Ages through WWII, including everything from original stonework from the Marienkirche (local cathedral) to a complete room from a traditional guild hall. The sword used for executing thieves was intimidating, but the little textile shop room from the early 20th century was really charming.

The most important thing I have learned from the tour and the museum: Reutlingen was an imperial city. This meant, back in the days of the Holy Roman Empire, that Reutlingen had market privileges, trade privileges, and self-governance. You can see evidence of this everywhere in the town. The manhole covers in the Stadmitte feature the imperial eagle, as does the facade of every major building built before the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire by Napolean (that cad). The Marienkirche even has the imperial eagle in some of its tile work. To this day, the mayor of Reutlingen still has to swear every year in a formal ceremony to serve the citizens of the city, which is cool. (I would also like to take this moment to point out the history I’m learning- Look mom, education!)

The most scenic event of the week however was our visit to Burg Hohenzollern, an honest-to-goodness castle that is still owned by actual royals. The journey there was nice, but the footpath up to the castle was steep. And long.

Brittany and Kaitlyn taking a brief respite from climbing the near vertical stairs.

Once you’ve made it up the stairs, you’re rewarded with a castle, and some really gorgeous views.

The view from the top.

This castle was part of the ancestral lands owned by Kaiser Wilhelm II, also known as the guy who was technically in charge of Germany during the first world war. The castle itself is fairly new, only dating back to the 1800’s. (Insert comment about the lack of years of American history here!) They have some excellent artifacts from the family on display, who became the rulers of much of the lands we now call Germany in the Middle Ages and hung on through WWI.

No members of the Hohenzollern family have really lived there since the early 1900’s. But, they do occasionally visit. We just happened to be there at the same time as Georg Friedrich, who is the current Prince of Prussia. I was unaware that any German noble titles still existed to be granted, especially the ones belonging to the now-defunct monarchy, but my ignorance has now been remedied.

The Prince very kindly offered to take a picture with us- that is, the group of around 70 international students from Reutlingen University. I do not have access to this picture, but somewhere there exists actual photographic evidence that I was within ten feet of royalty. Maybe Georg Friedrich has an Istagram? I shall investigate, and leave you with another beautiful view of the Schwabian Alps.

From one of the guardposts on the outerwall.

Reutlingen

September 4, 2014 / katherineackerman / 0 Comments

Because I was not able to move into my Stuendentwohnheim until September, I was able to spend a weekend at the Valpo center in Reutlingen. It was lovely to get to see another city and just do some exploring during the first few days.

The first day I was pretty jetlagged, but I did manage to say up until 10:00, which helped immensely in getting used to the time change. The director of the Valpo center also invited me to join the group for lunch and dinner which was very lovely. I was surprised to be able to stay up until a normal hour (ten), which greatly diminished the effects of jetlag the next couple of days.

The second day was the Stadtrundgang (tour) of Reutlingen. Reutlingen is home to almost all major german manufacturing companies that have headquarters in nearby Stuttgart, notably a large Bosch plant. It has 100,000 residents spread out between the Stadtmitte (city center) and the surrounding areas that actually used to be indepedent Dörfer (villages). This makes it a Großstadt (large city), which is the largest municipal division that German has. It actually makes sense, but it seems to be a little small to me considering that that is the population of Naperville, IL, but in Germany the proportions for large cities are a bit smaller than back home. The tour ended in lunch at a traditional German Kneipe (a mix between a restaurant and a pub) where we had traditonal Spätzle, a dumpling made with flour and water that is usually served with cheese and browned onions. A few of the other students and I also went to the wine festival that was going on downtown, which was very charming and provided me with my first piece of kitchenware. German festivals like to sell cheap souvenir glasses, something that will help in eventually filling out my dishware collection.

On Saturday, I went with the Valpo Intern Kaitlyn to the Markt, a giant farmer’s market in the townsquare of Reutlingen. It was great to see a lot of the vegetables that I hadn’t eaten in a while like Wirsing (Savoy cabbage), Kohlrabi (another type of cabbage), and Pfifferlinge, a type of woodland mushroom that is a sign of the impending autumn. I didn’t end up buying anything because I didn’t want it to go bad before I get to my WG (how I shall henceforth refer to my dwelling it stands for Wohngemeinschaft, or living community). In the afternoon, I joined the Valpo group to go to a game of the local football team SSV Reutlingen. I know that I am not British, but I personally prefer the term football to soccer not only because of its more accurate descriptive qualities, but also because it is the term that is used by the rest of the world to describe a sport that is of much higher importance to many other countries that it is in the U.S. The game ended in a tie with the other team scoring a goal in the final minute. It was a lovely day for a game and to sit outside. Later, I had the first of what I predict will be many bakery sandwiches. Germany has a great tradition of bread which (to me) can only be topped by its great tradition of putting things on bread. I had a tomato and cheese sandwich, but because of the high quality ingredients on it, it was honestly the best meal I’ve eaten so far in Germany.

And finally came my favorite day of the week in Germany: Sunday. Sunday in Germany is great because they are truly a day for resting. Most shops are closed and because of this, there is an attitude of relaxation on Sundays that just is not possible on any other day of the week. I know people who do not like this aspect of German culture, but I really enjoy having a single day of the week in which I cannot be running around all of the time. I think that it is good to have a day to rest and recharge before continuing on with the rest of the week. For dinner, I had a veggie Döner. Döner are the quintessential German fast food. They are essentially like a gyro (although, debatably much better) and the veggie Döner are basically a large flatbread stuffed with vegetables, a large slice of sheep’s cheese, cucumber sauce, and hot chili flakes. You can also order a Turkisch tea alongside them and it makes a great meal.

As for now, I am headed off to Tübingen to move into my WG and register for the intensive German class that I will be taking for the next month. I can not wait to see what Tübingen has in store.

Bis Bald!

Every Day I Shall Have a Chocolate Croissant

August 31, 2014 / Katie Rinda / 0 Comments

Katie Ackerman (Right) and I at the Reutlingen SSV match on Saturday

Week One in Reutlingen

Five Valpo students arrived at the Stuttgart airport Thursday noon, hauling our lives around in suitcases, energy sapped, but enthusiasm mostly intact. Four of us: Brittany, Alan, P.J., and I, were bound for Reutlingen and the Valpo Study Center there. The fifth, Katie Ackerman was tagging along until she could move into her apartment in Tübingen. Of the five, I think I’m the only one to have never visited Europe before. I apparently was not as nervous about this as I could have been.

The Reutlingen students and I are all living in Wurmhaus, a mostly international student dormitory with a longer name which I currently cannot recall. Theophil-Wurmhaus perhaps? It’s on the edge of campus, and a short walk from the city soccer stadium, where we went to watch the Reutlingen SSV get Portugaled yesterday. (For those who don’t recall, this is where a scoreless game is finally broken by your team, only to be crushed by the other team a few moments before the game ends. See also: USA v. Portual, 2014 FIFA World Cup.)

Wurmhaus, Home Sweet Home

It’s a longer walk to downtown- about 25 minutes- but the bus runs pretty frequently. Like many cities that are hundreds and hundreds of years old, Reutlingen’s center is filled with historic and beautiful buildings. The Tübinger Tur and Garden Tur are gates from the original castle walls that are still standing imposingly around the city center, or Stadtmitte.

We’ve been exploring our new home the past few days, learning mostly the practical things like where the grocery and train and buses are, but also getting into the beat of the rhythm of life here. We wandered through the Reutlingen Wine Festival Friday. The vendors’ tents were circled all around the Marienkirche, Reutlingen’s cathedral, completed in the 15th century. By nighttime the tables and the paths were full. We stood and chatted over glasses of local Riesling, along with about everybody else in the city. Today we walked through the massive park next to the soccer stadium. The morning rain had pushed slugs and snails onto the asphalt path, which grossed me out. (Brittany found them quite adorable, and asked that I tell you so.)

But perhaps the most important place we have been introduced to is the bakery down the hill from Wurmhaus. It’s open every day. It serves delicious coffee and baked goods. It’s less than a minute walk from our dorm. The best part, however, would have to be the Nutella filled croissants they make EVERY DAY. This is possibly the greatest thing mankind has ever invented. I now have breakfast plans for the entire semester. Done.

A Year in 2 Bags (I hope!)

Packing Light?

August 27, 2014 / katherineackerman / 0 Comments

So in my preparations so far for heading to Germany, I have discovered one thing: I am not a light packer. It seems like the last time I had to pack up all of my things for a year away, it was a bit easier.

In the process of trying to pack things for every circumstance, I think that I’ve forgotten my own best advice: I will inevitably forget something and that, in and of itself is part of the process. Forgetting and not being prepared and learning from the things that you forget are not a downfall, but an opportunity to learn something more. And that brings in a myriad of examples of things that I learned whilst I was previously studying abroad and things that I hope to continue to learn when I arrive in Germany.

I like to think of a quote from Rainer Maria Rilke’s novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge:

To what end should I say that I am changing? If I change, I do not stay the person that I was, and am something different than I have ever been. It is clear that I don’t have any acquaintances. And I can not possibly write to strangers.

What I like about this quote is although the character sees himself as a something that is constantly changing and how the changes in himself relate to other people. He still refers to himself as the abstract “I” and, although this is the grammatically correct way of referring to oneself, the linguistic consistency that it provides asserts a continuity between the present narrator and the person that he expects to become. And it is that consistency is why it is important to be reflective when studying abroad. Not because you will change, but because these changes interact with the people and places that you already know and have helped to shape the perspective through which you see the new ones.

So as I am preparing to make a major change in my life, I think of not only the changes that I want to see in myself, but the connections of past influences have had on my life and how they have shaped my decisions up to this point. This is basically a long-winded way of saying that I know that this year, although in a country that I have previously lived in, is still going to be a challenge, but perhaps in ways that I cannot predict or know.

And I’m most definitely looking forward to learning everything I can- regardless of what ends up in my suitcase.

Introduction: Katherine Ackerman in Tübingen, Germany!

August 18, 2014 / studyabroad / 0 Comments

“Man sieht sich immer zweimal im Leben”

Man sieht sich immer zweimal im Leben roughly translates to “you always meet twice in life.” When I last heard this phrase, I was 18 years old and had just spent my senior year of high school studying abroad in Germany. After 2 years studying here at Valpo, I’m going back for another year, this time at a German university. I’ll be spending my time reconnecting with a culture that I have grown to love, increasing my fluency and learning even more about the people and places in Germany.

Things will be a lot different this time around. Instead of living with a family I’ll be on my own, living in a German dormitory, cooking for myself and navigating everything on my own. This is my first experience living in a true apartment and I’m excited to learn the best ways to cook vegetarian food in a largely meat-based culture and shop for veggies at the weekly outdoor market. I’m also going to live in a city more populous than anywhere I’ve ever lived before. When I studied in Germany in high school, I lived in a town of 500, which is a radically different experience than living in a bubbling student metropolis. I’m going to take advantage of this by exploring and travelling as much as I can in the area right outside my own door.

My first semester will actually start a bit early with the Deutschkompakt (Compact German) course offered by the university. The course will give me the opportunity to fine-tune my German and get to know Tübingen before classes start. I will also get to know the other foreign students at the university as well as my flatmates. In Germany, dorms are replaced by 6-8 person flats where each person has an individual room, but all share a bathroom, kitchen and common living area. Although there are cafeterias throughout the city, there is no central/formal meal plan so most of the cooking will be up to me.

The picture I included above is important, because it’s from the last time that I was in Tübingen, a few weeks before I came to Valpo. I studied abroad during my senior year of high school, meaning that I did not have the opportunity to go on college visits before applying to college. I had been to a few schools when my sister was looking at colleges, but I had not really had the opportunity to go on my own search. Looking at the university of Tübingen was really the only true college visit that I made. It was a trip that allowed me to codify my college search experience and help me transition into the idea of going to college despite being far away from home and all oft he colleges that I was considering while preparing for it.

And so, in many ways, returning to Tübingen is an experience of coming full circle, of reconnecting with my past and bringing together two different parts of my life. I will get to experience living in Germany again while maintaining my connection to Valpo. I fully look forward to diving into this new experience and finding out what more Germany has to offer. Deutschland, wir sehen uns endlich zum zweiten Mal!

Introduction: Katie Rinda in Reutlingen, Germany!

August 18, 2014 / studyabroad / 0 Comments

I have basically three months until I climb on board a plane for Stuttgart. I don’t know how you feel about change, but I’m pretty much freaking out about it. (The added stress from the end of the semester isn’t really helping.) Living in a foreign country is pretty scary as is, but it’s even scarier when you’re supposed to be working there as well.

Every time I’ve started working at a new place, I’ve had to learn a whole new vocabulary. Every industry and company has their own jargon, and the differences amplify when you add technical vocabulary to the list. It generally takes me a month to fully understand the lingo. And, in general, going to Germany will mean I have to learn a whole new set of words and procedures for just regular life. Hopefully, those years of studying German will pay off.

What I’m worried about is transitioning to my internship. Will I have developed enough German skills to sort through conversations to find what’s technical and what’s not? There’s always a jump between engineering at school, and engineering in the workplace. Sometimes, they seem to be on opposite ends of the spectrum. When I get comfortable with jargon, I can generally connect it back to what I’ve previously learned. Will the language barrier keep me from making those connections?

I really can’t answer that until I’ve spend time abroad. However, in anticipation of this problem, I’ve developed a few strategies to combat my ignorance of technical German:

Focus on language for industries I’m already knowledgeable about. I’ve already had one engineering internship, and will finish a different one this summer before I go abroad. Since those experiences will shape my resume, I’m starting to develop a list of words for industry specific terms. (Eg. I worked with aluminium rolling mills last summer: Aluminium Vorgerüste in German.) Thanks to my time at Alcoa, I know German companies who make mill products, and can learn vocab, just by reading the German version of their sites. General dictionary searches rarely can translate the jargon as well as the industry themselves.
Find Technical Articles. Similarly to industry jargon, technical articles will be full of official vocabulary from the field itself. Reading these articles not only teaches me more German, but also adds to my knowledge of engineering.
Speaking with native speakers in a casual environment. I’ve attended the weekly Kaffestunde at the German house frequently since I came to Valpo, and it has definitely improved my comprehension of German. Listening to native speakers rapid fire discuss politics or baking or their travels using words I didn’t learn in class, and actually beginning to understand them is really cool. It also tells me that if I can start to understand half the words, I should be able to understand the gist of the conversation.

That’s what I’ve put together so far. I’ll check back in on this after I’ve been over for a bit and report on the success/fail rate, or if I find anymore brilliant prep tips.

So nervous. So excited!

Saying (a Temporary) Goodbye

May 13, 2014 / kaitlyncarzoli / 0 Comments

Today I have to find a way to summarize what the last four months have meant to me, and honestly, I have no idea where to start. I feel like everything I could possibly say has been said a million times before, and yet I feel compelled to say it again because I really wish that more people would take that leap of faith and go study abroad. No words can completely describe how amazing an experience it is or how profoundly it changes you. It really would be a shame to miss out on this opportunity, so here is my final attempt to convince the masses.

First there are the tangible things–all the travel, events, and adventures you get to have. In addition to the two 10-day class trips that are jam-packed with activities, we had over 25 other events, including many free meals, concerts, and excursions. During the semester, they keep you busy. And of course that doesn’t even count the long weekends and spring break, when you can just go anywhere and everywhere.

Like Prague:

and Paris:

What’s arguably even more important are the intangible things you gain from this experience. You can meet people from all over the world. You’ll get completely comfortable hearing multiple languages, often spoken in the same room. You’ll learn that there is more than one good way to do pretty much anything. You’ll become a better problem-solver. You’ll get over all of your dumb little fears. You’ll learn how to do laundry, shop for groceries, and cook. (But hopefully you already do those things.)

But what has by far meant the most to me is getting to wake up every single day and be really excited about life. I’ve become much more independent and confident. After you successfully navigate Europe pretty much on your own, you’ll feel like you can do anything. Because you can. If you think about it, there aren’t a whole lot of things that are harder than packing up your life and moving to another country, so once you’ve done that, suddenly, the things that used to scare you just don’t anymore. And more importantly, you come to the realization that it’s the scary things in life that end up being most worthwhile.

Tomorrow, I have to say goodbye to Reutlingen, but I’m in a different position than most of my classmates. This goodbye will be easier for me because it is only a temporary one. Because I get to come back in three months, I’m mostly just excited to go home right now. But come August, it’ll be time to put everything I learned to good use again. I guess more than anything else, today I feel grateful, for the transformative experience this semester has been, for the relaxing summer ahead, and for the opportunity to spend another year right here where I belong.

Valpo Voyager

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