Detour proves right path after all

In the middle of January 2008, I waited in an auditorium anxiously, for what must have been the most prolonged 20 minutes of my life. I grasped the sweaty hands of the girls standing next to me in a long line of teenagers, all chosen to participate in Rotary International Youth Exchange.

We were all giddy and sick with nerves, and felt as if we were standing on the edge of a precipice. In another line opposite us were teenagers from all over the world — from Thailand, France, Brazil, and other countries in Europe and South America. Between us, in that great gap, stood one woman, Sondra Schuab, the district exchange coordinator, who called us out one by one to tell us where we would go.

I wanted France. I had been studying French for two years, and it was my French teacher who introduced me to the idea of participating in an exchange program.

When Sondra called my name, my heart raced. I walked out to her in the middle of the room, everyone’s eyes upon us.

“You said in your application you wanted to go to France,” she started. All I could do was nod. “Well we’re sending you to a neighbor: Germany!”

If not for the charge of German exchange students who rushed out and dragged me over to the other line, I would have stayed frozen in place in the center of the gym. I sat with a German flag they had draped over me, and played with the idea; I was going to live in Germany, a country that I knew so little about at the time.

It seemed impossible and unreal, and that impossible feeling stayed with me until I was on the plane and arriving in my new country.

I walked out of the baggage claim and met my host mother for the first time, Olivia Delgmann. Together we drove for an additional two hours from Frankfurt to Karlsruhe, my city. To a girl from the small town of Sebastopol, Karlsruhe was giant, with a whopping population of 288,917.

Over the next 10 months, I would meet more people than I can recall and learned more German than I remember, yet there will always be small moments that stand out in my memory.

During one break between classes, after we had received a test back, I saw tears roll down the face of my classmate, Laura, as she stared at her paper. She sat there with the realization that she would have to explain to her parents why she had failed.

It was then that I realized we all have similar worries, wants and needs, regardless of place or financial situation. Before, I didn’t think I had much in common with these people. But from that point on I began to see more and more similarities between our two cultures.

Along with my epiphany, I also altered slowly, in a type of metamorphosis that one only realizes has happened when one looks back. Simply by living there, I grew more autonomous. Questions faced me that I would have rarely considered before my exchange.

Which cell phone do I buy, and how do I budget it? How long can I make one bottle of shampoo last? I rarely thought, “Hanna, you are walking down a street thousands of miles away from home, and you are only thinking of hand lotion!”

It could have been that during my exchange I didn’t see home as California, but as my host city. I didn’t think of Karlsruhe as a European city, but as my city.

I was given the amazing opportunity to see another culture from the perspective of its people, not as a tourist.

My exchange is an experience that has extremely altered the way I think and forms who I am today. Of course, there are the typical results of living in a foreign country. I do speak fluent German and now have an understanding for a once-different culture that is now imbedded into my identity.

However, the independence and self-reliance I found there are just as treasured to me.

I found that we are all the same in that we all strive to find similar things in life, and such an insight has provided me with a more gentle and positive outlook on life. Yet I am not concrete, and with each new opportunity I hope to improve myself.