Discombobulated reflectioning.

I was going to take advantage of lastnight's AMAZING thunderstorm to try and sum up some thoughts about my trip, but then it was already midnight and I discovered that my French class that I assumed started next week with all the others ACTUALLY starts tomorrow at 8.30a.m..(Nooooo, I'm not ready to return the world of academia yet!) Long story short, here's take two!

...

What can to say? And how to say it in an organized manner?
Eleven (11) hosts. Twenty-three (23) cities. Fifty (50) and a half hours on trains. It was amazing.

Things that surprised me:

1. All the pure generosity and trust received from people who had never met me. Sure, I expected people to be generous, but the chocolate-laden pillows and house keys never ceased to shock me in the best kind of way.

2. How different each location was from one another! Each city/town had its own atmosphere and flavor of architecture that was different from the last. Some of the architectural styles differed to the extreme - compare Bavaria with Dresden and then the northeast coast for example. New things grabbed my attention in each place, which kept things visually exciting.

3. When talking about their feelings of German identity, almost every single host brought up the concept of a having a stronger "European identity" than anything else. A couple people even went as far as "world citizen." I think I'd expected people to say their regional identities were stronger than their feeling of national identity, which was usually true, but this overwhelming idea of "being european" as the strongest of all had simply never occurred to me.

4. On a more personal level, the fact that I was able to stay with host after host without having to go hide in a cave somewhere both surprised and impressed me. To be honest, part of me had really been dreading this trip simply for the social aspect, but in the end, that part hardly phased me. Part of it might be due to all the alone time I usually had during the day either traveling from A to B or exploring, but who knows. (Go, extrovert, go!) I wonder what past experiences have secretly helped me grow in this respect?

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It's taken me almost two days just to write this much. (Busybusybusy.) The long chunk of the trip is done, but I'll probably still end up visiting a couple more families that were interested in hosting me but hadn't had time while I was there. I still need to get to the middle of the country as well as the northnorth and northwest coast. There's still so much to see and explore!

It was such an incredible, enriching month and I am so, so grateful to have received this opportunity. Thank you, thank you, thank you to the generous strangers that provided the funding for this project. It was definitely worth all the effort put in to getting the fellowship and I'm glad I didn't wimp out on it even in the midst of all my classes and theater.

Tomorrow morning I'm ride-sharing early to Detmold to celebrate Easter with my favorite German family. The thought thrills me and exhausts me. Really I just want to check out of the world and sleep for a week before checking back in. If only, if only.

I might update this as I think of more cool discoveries from my trip. We'll see. Oh, to sleep.
Happy Easter.