Post 3: Leipzig Reflections

When I was in Leipzig, Germany completing a language immersion with interDaF through the University of Leipzig, I was homesick, overwhelmed, and full of culture shock. To be completely honest, it was not as glamorous as my Instagram stories made it seem. Through this homesickness and everything I was feeling (not having data on my phone or Wifi in my room), I had unlimited time to reflect and distract. When I wasn't exploring the city or in class, and finally got the internet working on my computer, I would listen to my favorite podcast, "The Morning Toast," watch Netflix, or my favorite past time, figure out my travel plans for when I was finally in Berlin. I also spent a lot of time thinking about how I was feeling, why I was feeling that way, and calling my friends at home to talk about it.

Unfortunately, a lot of my time in Leipzig involved me patiently waiting for all of these horrible feelings to pass. Luckily, I quickly made many great friends who kept me active and having fun even while experiencing so much culture shock. On my second night in Leipzig I left the house all by myself for the first time. Elizabeth, also a student at HWS, and I lived in the same apartment. This meant that we went to school and everywhere together. But, I ventured onto the tram and S-Bahn by myself and somehow navigated the route to the Leipzig Markt using without my phone. While living without data and limited wifi was very difficult for me, especially considering one of my majors is Media & Society, this small victory made me feel that I might just be okay.

When interDaF introduced the idea of having projects I was really excited and assumed I would sign up for the music project since I am a Music minor, but something kept drawing me to the literature project. Everyone around me spoke much better German than I did, yet kept talking about how even they didn't know enough German to be in this project. When the professor presented the project she said, "If you think you don't know enough German to be in this project, trust me, you do. Don't let that scare you away from this project. Sign up!" That was enough for me to decide to push myself and learn to write poetry in German.

On the first day of the project my teacher asked the 8 of us, in German, what we were interested in doing for our project presentation. I quickly realized that everyone in the room was in one of the top level German courses and that I was in the second most bottom level. When the teacher could sense my frustration in not being able to communicate what I wanted to write about, she left the room and let all of us discuss in English. This is when I thrived. I had the idea to make an Instagram account where we would post photos of our written poetry, that way when we presented it to the other students they could follow along on Instagram while we read, and it would be visually interesting. As a group we decided to write about the city of Leipzig and our experiences in the program. When our teacher came back another student explained my idea in German and she loved it. I immediately began working.

I first wrote my ideas in English in my notebook. Reflecting on my time in Leipzig, I felt as though I was always waiting. Waiting for the walking light to turn green, waiting for the tram, the S-bahn, coffee, and most importantly, waiting to love Leipzig as much as the locals and most of my friends did. I wrote these ideas down and translated them as best as I could. My favorite line of the poem is, "Noch/ Stehen stille Menschen/ Auf stillen Straßen und/ Warten/ Dass es grün wird." In English I was writing, "still people on quiet streets wait for the light to turn green," but once my teacher and I worked on the translation, the repetition of the "Shht" sound became apparent in the German word choice. One of my favorite literary devices is alliteration, so I was excited to see that this device would be heightened in this line when the language changed.

By the time we finished this project, published the Instagram account (instadaf1- give us a follow!), and presented it to all of the other students, the waiting was over. I was loving life in Leipzig, so excited for the future of life in the big city of Berlin, and was grateful for every moment.

Now living in Berlin with a host family I could not be more thankful for my experiences in Leipzig. I feel as though I can accomplish and do anything I want to and feel more open to all challenges. I am quickly learning a language and have fallen in love with a new culture and history. I didn't have to wait to love Berlin, and I have my experience in Leipzig to thank for that.

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(4/4)

Blätter rascheln. 

Straßenbahn bimmeln. 

Krankenwagen schrecken uns auf. 

Noch

Stehen stille Menschen

Auf stillen Straßen und

Warten 

Dass es grün wird.

Im Leipzig warten wir. 

Ich warte am Hauptbahnhof

Ich gehe, um zu warten 

Ich warte darauf, es hier zu mögen. 

Dann

Ist es auf einmal wert

Gewartet zu haben.