Maggie (Without) Borders: My Year in Germany

So I've been wanting to write about making mistakes for a long time, but I kept forgetting and writing the wrong post. Ba-dum-tish.  --- I've been making mistakes for six months now. (For those of you keeping track at home, that is indeed  how long I've been in Germany, good on you for noticing.) I've gotten really good at it. It's like I think something, and it's incorrect. Without even doing anything, I've gone and made a mistake. At this point, I've come to think of it as a talent.  Okay, so maybe it isn't that bad. But I do think that I've made more mistakes in the past 6 months than I have, say, my entire college career. I wish that part were a joke, but between the new culture, language, schools, cities, families, friends, transport systems... there's a lot to mess up.  At some point in my life, someone made it very clear to me that making mistakes was entirely unacceptable (everybody wave to my dad as I inte...

Though I am not fortunate enough to have had a host family for the past 3 months, I am fortunate to have a friend with a wonderfully welcoming host family. They invited me into their home for Christmas, and my future host family (more on that in another post) invited me over to spend New Year's with them. Christmas eve Kaffee und Kuchen. It was so, so nice to spend the holidays among a family. It might not have been my own, but it made me feel a lot less isolated. I really can't overemphasize how friendly most of the Germans that I've met have been. I mean, these people invited me into their home to spend the 3 days of Christmas (Christmas eve, Christmas day, Boxing day) with them without any hesitation. They even got me some amazing gifts: The bear's name is Fritz. Also important: they fed me. No, they overfed me. No, they fed me, and I overate. No regrets! One of the things I learned about the holiday season in Germany is that families generally ea...

Frohes neues, und einen guten Rutsch! Germans don't just wish you a happy new year; they also wish you, directly translated, "a good slide" into the new year. In essence, they hope that you enter the new year happy, healthy, and on the right path to personal success, and I think that's a nice sentiment. I usually don't bother with new year's resolutions, as I don't see the sense in putting things off to the new year. If I want to be a better person, why not just start improving as soon as I note something worth working on? This year, though, I reflected on things I both did and didn't do, and decided that I did have one new year's resolution: follow through. (Okay, two. The second is to eat less cheese). It's not like I don't have the capacity to follow through on the things I plan on doing. I mean, I told myself in 2015 that I was going to apply for PPP, and here I am enjoying the start of 2018 in Germany. But I realized that there w...

So, as of checks watch fourteen days ago, I completed the second part of my year as a PPPler: the university phase. I had my fair share of adventures, mishaps, and stress during the last semester, and so I figure it's probably worth talking about. Buckle up--it's a long one, and I recommend not reading if you have literally anything else to do. Why/How to Study at a German Uni So, PPP is a cultural exchange and the point is to get to know the various German institutions with which a young German professional would regularly encounter yadda yadda yadda. It therefore makes sense that we would be required to study at a German university, since most German young professionals complete some form of higher education. That said, unlike the US, they have a few different options, so here are some handy infographics to help you understand the German system: Clear as mud, right?  To Americans, this system is hopelessly complicated. Even though I feel lik...

I realized that, while I had mentioned language school previously, I have yet to actually describe what it was like. As my goal with this blog was to catalogue my experience for my family/friends as well as potential participants…. Whoops. Let me get on that. So: throwback to Köln! Arrival was surreal. The first place we actually went within the city was the Carl Duisberg Centrum , or CDC, which was our language school. Awaiting us was a small reception where we were introduced to the staff. We didn’t stay for long—we were very quickly given our host families’ addresses and descriptions along with 250 Euros for food for the month, then picked up one by one by taxis or our new host parents. The next few days were spent adjusting and learning exactly what we were in for during our stay in Cologne: language classes, a weeks-long group project, mandatory trips to Bonn, and almost daily excursions. Language Classes Now, it’s worthwhile to say that I can only speak on my exper...