Being an exchange student is an amazing experience, but having to say goodbye is the hardest part about it. You leave your life in your home country to come to a foreign country where you don’t know anybody and live a new, completely different life for one year. Then you are supposed to leave forever and go back and get used to your old life again.

Finding really good friends took time, but once I had them, I do not want to leave at all anymore. Of course, I also miss my family and friends back in Germany, but I always knew I was going to see them again after the year. I don’t know for sure when I’m going to see my friends here again, although I hope I can visit soon.

I’m also going to miss living rurally like this. I never thought I would say that because I come from a big city. It’s actually fun though because you actually know your neighbors and other people and there’s also not as much traffic, so you can just go cruising without having to worry about traffic jams.

Another thing I’m going to miss is some of the food here, especially ice cream. We don’t have Dairy Queen in Germany, which means we don’t have blizzards. But there’s also some German food that you don’t have here which I’m looking forward to eating again. For example Pretzels – although there are Pretzels in America, too, they just don’t taste the same as in Germany.

The thing I’m looking forward to the least in Germany is school. School in Germany is so much more stressful; you have more tests and you have to try to do good on every single one of them because otherwise your final grades aren’t good and you won’t get accepted into college and it’s also hard to find a job afterward. 

This year was one of the best years of my life and I wish I could just stay here for another year and have more amazing experiences, but unfortunately, that’s not an option, so I just hope that I’ll be able to visit soon.