same old story

It has been exactly one month and eleven days since i've been back from europe. when i first came back i was so happy to have air conditioning, text on my regular phone and drive my car. but after a while..it lost its glamour. haha, i found it difficult to say "excuse me" and "thank you" in english rather than german...and to this day my phone is still in military time. i refuse to change it back...its my last link to germany.

i feel like our time in germany was a different life! does anyone else feel that way?

i realized i missed walking everywhere, feeling the cool breeze in my hair. i missed the U-bahn and bus system. i missed having cold cuts for breakfast and being able to buy the most legit bread on every street corner. i missed being out in the world experiencing, seeing, feeling, hearing new things. i miss being able to hop on a train and arrive in a completely different culture. i miss that way of life.....the simplicity and complexity oddly meshed together...

before the trip i thought germany was going to be my least favorite country. i thought i was going to like italy the best! haha, funny how that turned out. out of all the countries we visited germany was my favorite. of course i loved visiting switzerland and prague and the other places..but i could honestly see myself living in germany. maybe not for my whole life..but definitely for an extended period of time.

germany 2009 seriously changed everything. it changed my perspective on what i want out of my life. before i went on the trip i was set on applying to medical school, following the game plan i had set years before. during the trip i realized that there was so much more to the world that school, than texas, than everything i have been immersed in for 21 years of my life. i realized i wanted to do more with myself than just settle for my "plan". so now i'm taking a year off! i will be travelling back to germany next summer! i hope to work with the AIB as a student worker and really just barrel head first in the german culture.

from a medical perspective, learning some things about european health care opened my eyes to bigger pictures, bigger problems. i am enrolling in the BIMS 4+1 MPH program so that i can learn more about the global/population perspective of health care.

going to europe made me OPEN MY EYES. my stupid little bubble was broken and i was able to experience a culture vastly different from my own... and apart from these experiences i made some of the greatest friends. although we are back in CS and very busy...we still talk and hang out! we will forever share these memories and look back at how each other made this experience the greatest of all time. guys, yall made this trip amazing and i couldn't have asked for a better group of people!

thank you germany 2009. although this trip cost an exorbitant amount of money...it was worth every single euro cent. every single one.

this trip will forever be one of the greatest experiences of my life. i hope that my children will have an opportunity to have a professor like dr. wasser, share in his passion and love for different cultures/countries, go on a trip like this and have this immense experience.

over and out duesseldorf digest,
shyanie