(These thoughts were recorded at the beginning of the program, they just didn’t get posted until the last day.)
I’m on this trip because I wanted to experience Germany. I wanted to walk the streets of Berlin and live in a place thousands of miles from home. I grew up in a small rural town in Iowa and I’ve always wanted to see the world. I traveled to places around North America, but I’ve never been beyond it. This was my chance to study and live abroad during my time at Calvin. While this may imply that I am here to be a tourist, my intentions are completely different. I hope to live, in some small way, like Germans do. To see things from their point of view. To learn about how their history influences who they are today, and what they think of the world.
More practically, I want to learn what it’s like to live in a city. How to get from point A to point B without the cars that are a vital facet of rural Iowan life. How to find food, housing, and other necessities without superstores or the convenience of a home. I want to learn the language, but also to experience not being able to communicate. To know what’s it’s like to be a stranger in a strange land.
My hope is that by the end of the program I will have learned how to live in another country, at least in some small way. I will, of course, learn about Statics and Dynamics, as that is the engineering class I will be taking. However, the lessons I learn outside the classroom will be more important.
I hope that not everything goes well on this program. That may sound strange, but there is a method to my madness. While I hope nothing seriously bad happens, I do hope something will go wrong. Such that we must adapt to it. That we become uncomfortable and must change our habits and grow from the experience.