Reflections and Discoveries

Once again I sit down at my computer and attempt to put into words the odd mixture of feelings that constitutes being here.  I don’t know what to make of it.  I have the weirdest mood swings from day to day, even hour to hour.  Earlier today I was perfectly content being here and then suddenly it’s just not what I want it to be.  It’s the strangest thing.  The moment that I think about home I get pulled into a sort of funk and a wave of homesickness that is almost unwiderstehlich.  I don’t know how long this is going to last, but I am not enjoying this roller coaster.  I’m about to toss my cookies.

I think the one thing that I would change, if I could pick only one thing about my situation here to change, would be the ratio of Germans to foreigners and Americans in my friends list.  I think that if I was fully immersed, hanging out only with Germans all the time, speaking German all the time, I would be much happier.  Right now I’m sort of in this limbo of trying to grasp a new culture, new people, new habits, a new language – and yet I can’t quite separate myself from where I come from and who I am because at the end of the day those things follow me through the Americans that I’ve met here and become very good friends with.  It’s like we were discussing in class the other day – you can’t change your nationality, can’t change who you are.  I wanted so badly to become a “temporary German” when I came here and yet I’m finding out that whether I want to or not that isn’t really possible in this town.  To do that I’d have to move out onto the countryside and live in a small village where there aren’t Americans and other foreign students at every turn.

I don’t mean to say that I don’t like my American friends here in Tübingen.  Quite the opposite, they’re amazing.  But I’m not doing myself any favors by hanging out with them the majority of the time.

I think this is why I was so happy up at Matze’s house with his family the first two weeks of my stay here in Germany.  I was totally isolated from everything back home and spoke German 100% of the time -- and it was fantastic.  I don’t remember really being homesick – or at least not as homesick as I am now.  I remember a feeling of confusion, of not really knowing where I belonged, whether home was here in Germany or back in the States – and I think that’s an indication of just how immersed I really was.  I don’t feel that way here.  Here in Tuebingen, the fact that this isn’t home smacks me in the face every time I walk down the street.

It was easier in Neustadt because I was able to let go of everyone and everything back home – I had a new, temporary family and a new, temporary village, a “new life.”  That sounds stupid because I was only there two weeks, but it’s true in a sense.  When you’re not even speaking your native language all day, it gets hard to think of home too much.  Matze’s friends were so eager to meet me, so eager to find out about life in the States, so friendly and so accepting.  And that felt good.  Matze’s family was also just amazing.  Simply wonderful.  I miss them all so much and I’m so excited to go back up for Christmas.  Here, the Germans are so used to seeing foreigners run around that they don’t really seem to care who you are and don’t want to hear anything about it.  

So that’s what I’ve figured out the past few days.  In order for me to really be 100% happy here, I have to leave everything behind.  I can’t sit on this fence anymore.  It doesn’t work and it makes me crazy.  But I can’t really jump off the fence because this town is full of exchange students from all over the world and no matter what I do I keep running into them.  I can’t escape my nationality and the fact that I am a foreigner here, can't run from home.  Home follows me all the way across the Atlantic and won't let go.  And that realization is the core of my frustration and the core of this maddening conflict inside me. 

And with that, I think it’s time to wrap up.  As a side note, I am going to attempt to blog at the most every other day (or when something of import happens) from now on, for two reasons: one, I think I need to stop spending so much time thinking and more time doing, and two, I think I have an unhealthy addiction to Xanga that needs to be curbed.  But please check back and leave me lots of feedback to come back to every other day when I post.