August 3, 1989: Thirty years ago today, I embarked on one
of the greatest adventures of my life and my passion for travel was born.
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August 3, 1989 at DFW Airport. The navy
jacket was required by Rotary and the tradition
is to cover it in pins and
badges you've received from others throughout the year.
In the days of writing letters on onion skin paper, prior to the dawn of e-mail, cell phones, Skype, Whatsapp, Instagram, and Facebook, I boarded my first-ever international flight bound for Munich to begin a year-long high school exchange program. Other than a brief step across the border into Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, where we bought Chiclets and silver earrings, I had never been out of the country before.
The entire plan was hatched 5 years earlier when I was
flipping through the pages of my older sister’s high school yearbook and
stumbled across pictures and articles about the exchange students attending her
school that year. What a concept! I was completely
transfixed by the idea that you could travel around the world to go to high
school in another country. Armed with this new information, I
marched into the living room and told my dad that I wanted to be an exchange
student. I was 11. My declaration fell flat; he simply looked
up from whatever he watching on TV and told me to remind him in five years.
I’m certain my dad thought I would forget to remind him or
perhaps didn't even give it a second thought. After all, it was very
likely that this was just a passing fancy for an 11-year-old. Whatever
the case, he was wrong. I marked the days off of my mental calendar
and waited patiently until about 4 ½ years had passed and raised the issue
again. My assumption was that I would need some lead time before the
5-year mark to set the wheels in motion. Nonplussed by my reminder,
my mom and dad were reluctantly receptive to the idea and we began
investigating programs. We settled on the Rotary Youth Exchange
Program. I got to list three countries of my choice on my application
(Germany, Spain, and Italy), but, ultimately, Rotary would decide whether to
accept me and where to send me.
To be honest, I don’t know what I thought my year abroad
would be like. Whatever I anticipated seeing and doing could
certainly have only been a mere fraction of what I really experienced.
My first experience, after arriving in Munich
and getting settled in my first host family’s house in a small town in Bavaria,
was being completely dislodged of the idea that I knew anything about the
German language. Turns out a couple of semesters of German at a Texas high
school do not even remotely prepare you for a visit to Deutschland (probably
the only word I pronounced correctly at the time). It was all Greek to me. Like a toddler learning to
talk, I was starting at the very beginning. Enter Sesamstraße (Sesame Street).
Krümelmonster and Bibo (Cookie Monster and Big Bird) were the first friends I
made, my trusty dictionary was a constant companion, and I became quite adept
at charades.
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| My trusty companion |
The early days of going to school were tough. My head often
hurt and I understood very little, but one night about three months into the
year I dreamt in German. After that, I started to comprehend more and the words
came to me more easily. Unlike school in Texas, I was with the same classmates
all day long and the teachers used the Socratic method…foreshadowing of my
later law school days. Most teachers gave me a lot of leeway and rarely called
on me at the beginning. Then, one day, my math teacher called on me. My entire
class protested in my defense saying that it wasn't fair and I didn't speak
enough German, but the teacher persisted. I nervously stood up at my desk and
began answering questions. Though I certainly bungled the words and didn’t
answer with exact precision or perhaps even correctly at all, the teacher was
pleased and I got a standing ovation from my class.
Unfortunately, one of the negative aspects of my
year was my first host family. I don’t think they really wanted to host a
student, and we just didn’t connect. I had a lovely set of rooms, a
quasi-apartment, in their beautiful home, but it was in a walkout basement as
far removed from the family as possible. When I was at home, I was lonely. I
stayed home very little. On Saturdays, I often took the train to Munich by
myself and went exploring.
Thankfully, Rotary located a new family for me
and I moved into their home in November. Moving in with them was a revelation.
This big city girl officially moved to the country. My new family lived in a
small village that had a population of around 800 and there were literally cows
in the field behind the house. My new "German parents" and I
immediately bonded and I felt right at home. I also gained a sister and the
cutest little grandparents you've ever seen. Omi is the kind of grandma who
pinches your cheeks, calls you child, tells you you're too pale, and insists
you eat something. The original plan was that I was only going to live with them
for a few months before going to another host family, but I ended up staying
with them for the rest of the year. Truth be told, they haven't gotten rid of
me to this day. I visit them every few years and they sat with my parents on
the front row when Chad and I got married.
In November 1989, something else infinitely more important than my move to a new host family happened. The Berlin Wall came down. The signs were all around that the Iron Curtain was on the verge of collapse, but the downing of the Berlin Wall changed everything, and I had the honor of witnessing the change live and not just on TV from 3,000 miles away. In May 1990, I went with a group of exchange students to Berlin and chopped down part of the wall myself.
I read somewhere that the average exchange student meets over 1,000 people during their time abroad. My estimate is that I met three times that many people. Every day I met someone new. Every day I learned something new. Every day I experienced something new. As a result, to this day, I continue to strive to meet new people, learn new things, and embark on new experiences. One year changed the trajectory of my entire life.
It's impossible for me to explore all of the experiences I had that year and honor the important friends I made that year in a single blog post. I just wanted to mark this important anniversary for the 11-year-old girl who dreamed of seeing the world.
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| My blazer weighed about 8 pounds by the end of the year |
