I have always been a thinker. Which means more that I get stuck on a thought in my head and can't quite get past it. Sometimes this is good but often it leads to needless worrying. When I get these thoughts out, usually through talking to trusted people in my life, my brain clears somewhat. Somehow after these refreshing and reenergizing conversations I always seem to stumble upon quotes that other people have gathered or that I somewhere found and liked. This year has been full of many repeating thoughts and definitely full of themes. These are a few quotes that give me energy, seem to summarize the themes of my thoughts or are motivating me behind the scenes.
"You must do the thing you think you cannot do."
~Eleanor Roosevelt
"Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint."
~Isaiah 40:30-31
"So this is the part where I'm supposed to tell you it's not scary. Well it is. But fear is natural, fear is good--it just means you're growing."
"The best day of your life is the one on which you decide your life is your own. No apologies or excuses. No one to lean on, rely on or blame. The gift is yours- it is an amazing journey and you alone are responsible for the quality of it. This is the day your life really begins."
-Bob Moawad
"We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities."
~Ralph Waldo Emerson (Isn't he just the smartest man??)
I think one of the most annoying sayings that people implement when giving advice is, “Life is full of change.”I honestly really don’t like hearing that.I know life is full of change, but it does not count in my book as explaining away everything and making it OK.OK, so yeah, maybe it is true and maybe acceptance is actually the best policy, but it still irritates me.Which is why it also kind of bugs me that I am about to use that phrase to sum up what has happened in the last 2.5 months of my blog-absenteeism.
As I and as all recent college grads know so well, life really is full of change, whether we want to acknowledge it or not.I’m personally more of a fan of unacknowledgement, which is why the fact that I would be leaving Elon on May 22nd did not fully sink in until about May 20th.Then it was bad news and I was a little bit of a mess.Well, the pace of change has barely slowed to take a breath since then and in the last 10 months I’ve moved away from Elon, back home, then to Bremen, Germany then again recently.
So, to bring everyone on to the same page, I’ll give you a quick ‘low down of what my last few months has looked like:
1.In January I finished my time at the University (thank goodness.) and wrapped up that phase of the program.(It’s worth repeating, thank goodness.)
2. At the end of January I stayed with my cousin Bethany, at her house with her family in Frankfurt.I had not seen Bethany for at least 10 years and now I have the pricelessly comforting knowledge that I have family in Germany.
3. In February I went to my last German class.Considering taking German for at least one day every week since the beginning of August, this is a HUGE deal.Finally I am set free!Though, when I go back to the US the first thing I’m going to do is sign myself up for German grammar and writing courses.
4.I had American visitors!! My mom came in January for 12 days and then my brother and great friend from Elon, Marisa, came in February.You all don’t have the attention span that could last long enough for me to explain how incredible it was to have these visitors.
5. I started my internship!As I think I have explained, with my program we are all obligated to do a five-month internship.I really can’t believe I’m already in the second month of it!I love my internship so far; it is teaching me so much about other fields in public relations and it is also giving me an excellent new taste for Bremen! (Literally and figuratively—I know have a very good idea of where the best chai teas are here.)I’m working for two self-employed woman, Frauke and Christel, who are friends and support each other in their respective work when possible.Frauke and I are planning a boat tour through the Bremen ports, which will take place in May, and for Christel I do fairly normal PR work in support of her cultural events within the city.The work is very interesting and I really enjoy it.The boat tour with Frauke combines city development, history, theater, music and more.The tour is extremely unique and I will definitely take a lot away from being involved with it.Considering I have already done two internships in the U.S. and am now a “college graduate,” I really wanted to use this internship time for something new and different.The last thing I wanted to do while in Germany was spend the majority of my day in an office.While I do spend a good amount of time indoors (which is OK because Bremen still is cloaked in gray 80 percent of the time), my time with my bosses includes so much other work and other people.It really is exactly how I wanted to use my internship time.
5.The biggest change of all:I moved.Yes, that’s right.I no longer live with a host family.The nitty gritty details behind my move make for a VERY long story, but I am so happy to have moved.To be perfectly clear:I did not move because I did not get along well with my host family.Quite the opposite, actually.I had a very nice relationship with my host mom and when I was thinking about moving, I thought a long time about the decision because of that.I did, ultimately, decide a move would be worth trying to get permission for.My program finally agreed, which was only made possible because my internship is so event-oriented and requires me so often to be available in the evening to work.Where I lived was a 35 or more minute transit into or out of the city center, which was fine on normal occasions, but the public transportation stops running at 12:30am five out of the seven days of the week.So, with the encouragement and help on my bosses, just two weeks after looking at the most perfect apartment I was moving in with the help of some friends.In Germany most young people live in what is called a “WG,” which, when translated, stands for “living community.”This is just a fancy name for a shared apartment.I live with two other 23 year olds who did not know each other until they lived together (the norm among WGs) and maintain their own schedules.It is really wonderful, though, because I am again in an atmosphere I feel completely at ease in:one with young people living their own life and doing things their own way.This is, of course, the atmosphere I have lived in for the last four years and I feel truly liberated to again be in this situation.What makes it 100 times better, though, is that I can walk within 20/25 minutes to almost anywhere I’d want to be and since I have a bike I can get anywhere even more quickly.I am no longer bonded by the tram and buses.Freedom tastes oh, so sweet.
Of course lots of little things happen to me every day and changes are going on constantly.The weather is finally waking from its slumber and I even ventured outside today without a coat.People are again returning in hoards to the banks of the Weser River and enjoying a beer, pizza or simply sunbathing.I now live a 10 minute walk from the Weser and I, too, am enjoying its banks through morning runs (yes, I am actually disciplining myself to do this!Trust me, I’m more surprised than you!) or afternoon walks.It is pure pleasure.And, of course, my German is constantly changing and almost always progressing (there are moments where I am convinced I am digressing), and I am able to talk about more and more subjects.There are still many, many, challenges for me in German and being at my internship has required a whole new vocabulary, but I am proud to say and I should not deny that my German is improving.I am very proud of how far I have come, but sometimes still feel daunted by how much more I could learn.That is, however, the nature of any language, so I have to constantly remind myself not to be too hard on myself!
In officially less than four months I will be back in the United States and I honestly can’t quite describe how that feels.Four months is longer than I was in Ireland two years ago and as the last 7 months has shown me, a lot more can change.Moving back to the US will hold even more changes, but for now I am focusing on enjoying how my world in Bremen changes before my eyes and do my best to keep up with it and enjoy.
Words are great, but sometimes I just want to watch...just sit back. Thank goodness CNN.com has videos as well as reports. Consider this my gift to the visual learner in all of you. The following are a selection of my favorite photos or memories from the last seven months.
Welcome to Bremen, Meaghan.
Schnoor Viertel, Bremen
Summer.
High flying.
Brouwerij (Brewery) 't IJ, Amsterdam.
Facts of the Life: Northern Germany is completely flat; German trains go fast; Sunsets will always be beautiful.
Munich, Bavaria
Manchmal ein bisschen Spaß ist in Ordnung...Sometimes fun ist just necessary.
Some traditions just don't die...even after 800 years--Freimarkt in Bremen
Art takeover in historic Berlin building.
Christmas Markt in Bremen, in front of Town Hall
The real reason I traveled to Nuremberg for the Christmas Markt--Lebkuchen.
Icy Hamburg.
Hamburg Town Hall and Christmas Markt
Old and just unendingly charming. Milan, Italy.
Turino, Italy
Sometimes wonderful things happen and you get visitors.
Then sometimes your brother flys from Los Angeles.
And then sometimes you're the luckiest little American in all of Germany.
There, now you know what my life has looked like. :)
Reading through my own blog (which I should do more often because I always find typos), I have realized that there is a serious lack of “daily life” details. I have written here a few times that I don’t just travel and have fun and that I actually do spend my time in other, valuable manners, but I haven’t actually given proof of that. The number one tip for job-applicants is to not tell, but to show, your skills at an interview. If this were an interview I would probably have not convinced you all of my “Not Just Fun” assertion. Therefore, I’d like to fill you all in on an extremely enlightening and worthwhile part of my university phase in Germany.
As a participant in my program I am obligated to complete 40 hours of community service. Considering what the country of Germany is giving to every member of my 75-person program, I find this little extra assignment completely reasonable. After easy completion of my 40 hours, I am so happy this portion of our side of the program exists, as it was easily the most fulfilling thing I have done in Germany since arriving.
With the help of my area representative, I heard about a soup kitchen run out of the kitchen of a local church on the south side of Bremen. After contacting and meeting the woman who started and to this day heads the non-profit, named “The Bremen Soup Angels (Die Bremer Suppen Engel),” it was agreed that I’d spend approximately 7 hours a week a the soup kitchen: Three hours on Monday morning helping to prepare the food and four hours Friday afternoon helping to distribute the food.
Like most soup kitchens, Suppen Engel prepares food for homeless or people in need. What makes Suppen Engel special and unique, in my opinion, is the fact that they go to the people instead of the people coming to them. How?, may you ask. Simple—Bikes. In Bremen, like in many cities across Europe, bikes are the preferred form of transportation. That apparently applies also to carrying almost 40 liters of boiling-hot soup, a trash bag full of rolls, a Tupperware crate full of buttered and meated- or cheesed-bread, a container of fresh vegetable salad, a container of fresh fruit salad and multiple thermoses of hot water and coffee. The bikes have been retrofitted with large metal baskets attached to the front wheels and then special little trailers have been outfitted to the bikes. It is truly an impressive setup and on my first day after having to ride a multiple-digit-kilogram contraption, my appreciation for the effort of the organization and those involved increased 10 fold. I think riding that bike for the twenty-or-less minutes required to go from Suppen Engel to the middle of the Bremen is a better workout than riding my bike through the pancake-flat streets of Bremen for the entire day. It was tough.
My morning duties included, mostly, cutting endless peppers, tomatoes, heads of lettuce, radishes, bean sprouts, spices, and you-name-it obscure vegetables for the green salad. The production in the kitchen of the church where Suppen Engel cooks is a very well oiled machine: One person cuts vegetables, such as huge cantaloupe-sized spheres of celery (I had never seen celery like this before), Brussels sprouts or broccoli, for the soup; one person works on the fruit salad; two or more people smear bread with butter (the amount of which I still find completely unnecessary) then add cold cuts or cheese; another helps me with the veggie salad and then there are always the floaters who grab a knife and chop-chop as fast as they can. In a matter of three hours all the afore-mentioned food is made, including a dessert on some days. This impressive operation happens four times a week and is all finished by 1:15 in time for the Bike Riders and Co., to dive into the somewhat hidden world of the Bremen homeless people.
Bremen is a city with between 500,000 and 600,000 thousands people. From this number, 600 are homeless. In Germany, if you are a citizen or legal resident of the country, you do not need to go hungry or be homeless. Every single legal German homeless person receives money once a month. Of course, these recipients should not be doing their grocery shopping at Whole Pay Check…uh, I mean Whole Foods, (which, by the way, is not in Germany), but they could theoretically make it by. While I did not ask any of the homeless people I met what their story was, I was able to gain from my fellow volunteers that Germany is plagued by the same poverty causing ways as America: Drugs, alcohol, joblessness and usually a dash of bad luck. Luckily, organizations like Suppen Engel and others are there to fill in the gaps.
My Friday afternoons spent standing around in front of the Bremen main train station, helping between 100 and 200 Bremen residents receive their perhaps only warm and nutritious meal of the day, were very rewarding and surprisingly so. I would not have ever expected to enjoy it as much as I did. One might have expected my experience and time with the homeless community of Bremen to be relatively sad, but it surprisingly was not. Sobering and humbling, it most certainly was, but not really sad. The people were always happy to see us and always very curious about why me and another PPPler, Nick, were volunteering. They were especially delighted and curious to meet an American, and a young woman at that, and were always filled with questions. I answered the same questions what seemed like to no end, but I also realized I did not mind. The people were truly enjoyable company, and furthermore, a huge part of everyday life in Germany is not running away from the fact that I’m American. I am doing everything I can to not stand out as much and mesh into the German society, but I also have realized I need to be open to the natural questions that pop up as a result of my nationality, and more importantly, not take offense to even the least thought-out questions. I suspect the homeless community is more cut off than any other from this cultural enrichment. I feel satisfied to think I fulfilled my volunteer roll in a slightly different way, but in the best way I could.
Unfortunately, now that my internship has started, I no longer have time to go to Bremer Suppen Engel, but it’s something I would like to continue if I ever find that I have a random Friday free. Everyone from the homeless community to the older woman to bosses people around and cleans up the kitchen seemed very accepting of me. I felt totally free through this experience to really experience and observe a new part of Bremen and also just be myself. I have never done anything quite like Bremer Suppen Engle and I believe it was something I needed to experience. This whole year revolves around experiencing new things and doing out of the ordinary things. My time at Suppen Engle was most definitely out of the ordinary and gave my ever-churning brain even more food for thought.
