Here is to Awesomeness!

If you read my last post, you'll realize being an exchange student is hard. After reading this post, however, you'll realize that being an exchange student is simply awesome.

As exchange students we get a clean slate. From the beginning, we are forced to create a new life in an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar people. We get to be whoever we want whenever we want. We are pretty much allowed to do anything, and when we mess up, we get to pull the "I'm-an-exchange-student" card. We get to live a different and foreign culture so well that it stops being foreign and different; it becomes our culture. We gain a brand new family and a great group of friends. We dream in the foreign language. We fall in love with the food. We make a different country our own. We make a new life out of what used to be unfamiliar.

But here is why being an exchange student truly rocks:

Food
An exchange student gets to try so much new food in a year that by the time the year is over you pretty much don't remember if you have tried a dish before. For me this is more than great! You don't really have to be my best friend to know that I have a deep, delicious, and beautiful relationship with food. I love to eat and try new things. It's like milk and cookies; they go perfectly together. It if it wasn't for this year abroad, I wouldn't have discovered my love for Döner. I eat it at least once a week. It's SO GOOD! I actually think I might have withdrawal symptoms once I go back.

Heaven on a plate!

Germany is not known for having the best cuisine, but the food is actually delicious. I've had things (many of which I can't even pronounce) that I just wanna stuff my face with until I explode. True story! There is a thing called Exchange 20. It's similar to freshman 15 where you gain 15 pounds the first year of college. As an exchange student, however, you are more likely to gain 20 pounds rather than just 15.

I sometimes think there are more bakeries here in Germany than there are people. In every corner there is a bakery filled with deliciousness. I eat at least one or two "snacks" from a bakery a day. This, my friend, is pure awesomeness.

Culture and Beer

Cutting up a log at a party!

In general, wherever you go as an exchange student you get to actually live the culture, and if you are lucky, you get to drink beer. German culture is a very happy and interesting culture. I wouldn't say it's completely different from american culture, but it is definitely fun! They have interesting things they do at parties. For example, at the New Year's party in my small town, they were practically chopping up a log. Also, they have songs that tell you what to do similar to songs in America. In one song, you have take off your shoe (preferably a boot) and wave it up and down. I didn't have to take my shoe because one random and kind guy gave me one of his boots. Another example of why being an exchange student rocks. One of the songs got almost everyone to sit in three rows and pretend we were rowing in a crew team with the occasional leaning to the sides and raising your hands in the air and screaming. I believe beer played a role in this awesome and funny madness. But who can blame them, it's amazing German beer.

Germany. If you are looking for a synonym for beer, you can use Germany. Germans love their beer, and I must say they have all the reasons to do so. German beer is, well, awesome.

Amber and I at Oktoberfest

Being an Exchange Student
Once an exchange student, always an exchange student! For some unknown reason, exchange students just love other exchange students. You get to be part of this group of people from all over the world who are going through and experiencing similar things. You get to be part of Facebook groups and Couch Surfing groups with people from all over the world. If two people are stranded in a strange city without a place to sleep, and one of them is an exchange student, I would bet my money on the exchange student finding a place before the other person. You automatically become so much more interesting and simply awesome when you are or have been an exchange student.

Four awesome exchange students in Dresden

There are some many reasons of why an exchange year is such a great and awesome thing to do. The positive things greatly outnumber the negative things. It actually makes the negative aspects seem trivial. However, one of the things I find to be the best thing of being an exchange student is the ability to find a group of people (host families, friends, other exchange students) and making them family.

Although I still have a couple of months left, the thought of leaving is terrifying! I can't wait to be home and see my old friends, but at the same time I'm not eager to leave behind this new life. Here is to Awesomeness for making this actually possible!

The Struggles of an Exchange Student

¡Feliz Año Nuevo! Happy New Year! Frohes Neues Jahr!

Warning: this post may be a little long and a little boring but I guarantee you'll fall in love with my writing. Ha! Just kidding.

It's been three months since my last post but hey, here I am. You may be wondering how my year is going, if I'm still alive, if I have already learned the ways of yodeling, or how many Bratwursts or bread I eat a day. As shocking as it may seem, yes I am still alive and no I have not learned the ways of yodeling. My last post described what I did that past month and similarly, I'll engulf you with details of the past three months but first I want to mention the major struggles an exchange student goes through.

I think the hardest thing for an exchange student is coping with all kinds of  loneliness.

Family:

You know when they say that Hispanics usually have big enough families to make a soccer team (or any kind of team by that matter)? You know, since there are always like 10 or 20 cousins, not to mention all the aunts and uncles and grandparents and neighbors and family friends and pets and the brother of the sister's best friend's cousin's son. Well, you can say I have the typical Hispanic family. For any type event (a birthday, a baptism, graduation, Christmas, or any single event that can lead to a party) we always get together and celebrate.

Here we are at a cousin's wedding (Only mom's side of the family)

Needless to say family is super important to me, and spending big holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year without them was rough. Luckily, my host family was beyond what I expected and thankfully my homesickness was not as bad as it could have been.

Friends:

Another huge problem I think every exchange student experiences when coping with loneliness is finding good friends in a country where the language, culture, and traditions are different.  It took me a while to realize what exactly was difficult about friends. The first time you start school, everyone is interested in you since you're an exchange student and foreign and stuff. And making friends is not hard at all. You tend to make a couple of good friends who turn out to be the group of friends you hangout with most of the time. You'll eventually find that good friend who you consider to be "best-friend" here in Germany (or insert the name of the country your in) aka your person (the person you can count on pretty much always being there for you regardless of the time/situation).

However, there's a slight problem. You came in to the lives of people. These lives have long been established and people already have their person. You're only going to be here for one year. Consequently, you never become someone's person. And this my friend, SUCKS! If someone here in Germany is stranded at 3 am or simply needs someone to talk because they are bored, chances are they will not think of the exchange student. I can't complain with my group of friends. They really are awesome. However, I know for a fact that I am no german's person. People are really friendly and open. If you text them, they reply. If you invite them someplace they'll most likely go. Being proactive is the key to cope with loneliness in this case. However, most exchange student will not truly be satisfied with the level of friendship they've attained since, again, most of the time the exchange student is no one's person. Although it is completely understandable, it truly SUCKS.

Now that I've told you about some of the struggles we exchange students go through, I'll tell you about the awesome things we exchange students go through...

On my next post ;D