5,300 Miles, a Handful of Beautiful People and an Experience Worth a Million

Having traveled abroad before, I had an idea of what I was in for when I decided to study abroad in Germany, but, looking back, my experience in Germany, Prague, and Austria was 100% unique from my experience in Spain. I can’t exactly pinpoint what it was that made it so different, but
it just was. I chose to go to Germany for the world experience and the opportunity for personal growth, which I obtained and took advantage of. I think what was so wonderful about my experience was the context. I got to spend every day with people who get me (well better than most people in the general population) and these people are interested in the same things I am. Even when interests differed among our group and the people we interacted with, I was intrigued by new ways of thinking and new ideas. I think this is what I loved the most. A world and a people that is a little more open, accepting, and overall interested in things.

I love Texas, and it will always be my home, where I am from, no matter where my journey of life may take me. My life growing up in small town America and my education at Texas A&M are part of me forever. Lord knows this accent gives me away anyways. That said, my views of Texas, College Station and the US did not really change upon returning home, but I guess I never let myself think that everything American was necessarily perfect, correct, or the absolute only
way to do things. I am well aware of the close-mindedness of some Texans and Americans, but I do not let that drown out the other people more like myself, who want to see different perspectives and ideas. I am a person interested in things, all sorts of things, even just finding out what interests other people. I always knew there was more to the world, including places equally (or even more) beautiful, comfortable, and great as well as wonderful people with
different experiences and different thoughts and ideas from my own. My trip to Germany was a way for me to get out there and experience all these things I knew existed, but knew very little about. The need to become a better world citizen is now apparent to me, and I am working on that. My favorite thing about Germany and perhaps Europe in general is that it is more comfortable in that people are more accepting of others. Sometimes I feel like my appearance is being constantly judged by someone here or maybe we just tend to be more self-conscious around people we know. Another thing I really linked is that people get out more. The go meet up for a beer, go get coffee, go read, go listen to music. I feel like Americans tend to sit at home, or each other’s houses, too much. We need to get out and meet people. Our lives would be so much more intriguing and we could find out so much more cool stuff about the world, even if it’s only our little 40-square-miles-of-College-Station world.

When I think about myself and my life in the future, I definitely see the horses in the pasture outside my bedroom window, and the closet filled with an obnoxious number of pairs of handmade cowboy boots, but now, more than ever, I feel that I need to travel and learn and get out in the world outside of my little one. I would love to spend a period of my life somewhere away from my little world filled with dirt roads and diesel trucks. I hope and pray that I can have
opportunities in my career or life in general that allow me world experiences so that I can make a bigger difference in my world and the lives of others near and far.