TIME

The last seconds of Physics drag on so slowly. A night with friends is gone in the blink of an eye. Hours of pondering while staring out the bus window turn out to have been just 12 minutes. The last 8 months in Germany seem to have just flown by at a speed of way too fast, even though the next 2 months look so long and scary. Time is one of the trickiest things out there. One of my exchange friends, Josh Tokioka, coined this quote: Time is in relativity.

My perspective of time has changed since I’ve been here. People going on 5 month exchanges, who complain about homesickness, seem a little weird to me, because I just think of when I had been in Germany for 5 months, I still had 5 months left at that point. The idea of college doesn’t seem scary at all, because at least you go home during breaks and random weekends. Even more on top of all that, it used to take an hour to drive down to downtown Dallas and how often did we do that? Not very often, less than once a week probably. Here, I’m sitting on a bus or train or waiting at the train station after my bus dropped me off a little early and will end up spending over an hour in transportation to go visit a friend for a couple hours, and it doesn’t bother me.

For example, it is an 8 minute train to get to the main train station, then I have to wait 11 minutes for the next bus, which I’ll sit on for 32 minutes until I get to another town, where then I’ll walk 3 minutes and get ready for dance class: 54 minutes later. The best of part of this story is that I could drive there in less than 15 minutes from driveway to parking lot, if I was just allowed to drive here and had a car. Then again, not worrying about gas and being able to get everyone is very nice, no matter how long it takes.

I flip through my photos organized by months, and I see the following titles:

August- Leaving and Language Camp

September- Moving to Aachen, Kayaking, and Trying on Dirndls

October- Oktoberfest, Herbstferien, a Tea Party

November- Fall in Aachen, our Chorfahrt, and our American Thanksgiving

December- Adventzeit and Christmas

January- Snow, CBYX Seminar in Köln

February- Karneval and Aschaffenburg

March- Jana’s Birthday, Holland, Tango practice, and Auschwitz

April- Sweden, Münster

My feeling of time is different. I’ll be in America again in a little less than 2 months and 2 weeks. It is scarier to me that I can remember back 2 months and 2 weeks ago, and it feels just like yesterday.


NEXT BLOG: SWEDEN (please expect within week)