Free Advice... Minimal Charge

So, I kept busier upon return than I had anticipated. Between visiting old friends, relatives, handling paperwork, looking into job, and more I completely forgot about writing this blog. Just as a warning, this post is going to be somewhat longer than the others but I plan on filling it with different kinds of useful information. I will start by discussing some of the differences between studying abroad and an international exchange program. Then I will move onto a few simple bits of advice that should make any experience that you have more enjoyable.

For anyone that has been reading my blog, either during my stay or any time after, I went on an International Exchange Program. This is a kind of agreement between two schools that allows free exchange of students. I went to sister school of the University of Wyoming which had some very interesting benefits. I was still enrolled as a UW student and paid UW tuition. From my understanding, this hold true no matter which of the sister schools you go to in any of the countries. I do not know if all exchanges are only with sister schools or if the tuition arrangement is true for all sister schools, but that was how my travels worked.

For anyone that has an interest in traveling abroad, there are some things that you should be aware of. The first is that you have options. At the University of Wyoming, you have three main options. You can go on an exchange as I did, you can participate in a Study Abroad Program, or you can go on a Faculty Led program. If you are a UW student, you can see the different kind of programs here. There are several determining factors that should be considered when trying to choose which experience you want to persue. Before you can really consider that, you need to know where you want to go and which options are available at the desired locations. You can also approach it the opposite way, first choosing the type of experience you want and then selecting a location from there. As I don't know what you want, i will begin by informing you about the differences in the experiences.

Part of the reason that I originally chose an exchange program is because I wanted to be put outside my comfort zone, to stand on my own, and to be forced to adapt and grow. Well, I certainly chose the right course of action for that. On an exchange program, you are very much on your own. Sure, you can always contact people at home for guidance and assistance, but all of the paperwork, planning, and follow through are on you. There will be people to help you where ever you go but you are the one in charge. You are responsible for finding housing (the university will likely have dorms or apartments available), selecting and applying for classes, filing for a residence permit, managing the transportation systems, acquiring health insurance and liability insurance, and filing for your transcript of records are all your responsibility. There are people to help you and places to go, but none of this will be taken care of or planned for you.

A Study Abroad Program is something very different. These programs are hosted and planned by some kind of 3rd party. This party may be independent of the University or it may be a program that is provided by a University, it really makes little difference. In both cases, the party running the program will handle the vast majority of the planning and execution. Housing is provided, the have people to help you and walk you through all of the steps once you arrive. In addition to this, you will also be part of a larger group and instantly be able to make more connections more quickly than would otherwise be possible. These programs also tend to be more expensive and are always paid directly to the part running the program, but for a more organized and less stressful experience, the cost balances out.

The third major option available for most students is a Faculty Led Program. These are very similar to the Study Abroad Prgroam but they are with people from your home university and are much shorter in duration. All of the Programs available at the University of Wyoming are during breaks in or between semesters. There are programs during summer and winter break as well as trips during spring break. These are very similar to the Study Abroad Programs in the fact that there is much less effort required on your part. Your major responsibilities are to get all applications turned in on time, be prepared for your trip, and to have your passport ready to go.

Which of these options you choose should be heavily influenced by the kind of person you are and the kind of experience that you want. As I said, I wanted to be greatly challenged, really develop my language skills, and be thrown into a situation as much as I could handle. I wanted to take responsibility and be able to stand on my own and have the pride that I accomplished something that few others even attempt. It was rough, it could be brutal, you know, it was life, just with an added spin to it. I was greatly challenged mentally and emotionally during my time abroad and even now I am still dealing with difficulties in logistics on both ends. If you thrive on challenges or this sounds interesting, an exchange program may be worth considering.

I have no personal experience with the other options but from the people that I have talked to I think I have a good idea of the result. If my experience sounds like it was a bit to intense for you then you might want to consider a Study Abroad Program. You will be away for a good length of time but you will have much less stress and logistics to manage. With everything already organized and with someone there to support you, you can focus on learning, growing, and having fun. There are very few people that I have talked to that did not enjoy their study abroad experience. I think the few that did either did not research where they were going and were completely surprised, or they were just not the kind of person suited for international travels. These things happen, and in order to get the best experience you can, you need to be honest with yourself and gather the facts.

The final option is very similar to the Study Abroad but much more low key. The main difference in the Faculty Led Programs is the duration. These trips tend to last anywhere from 2-8 weeks. As with the Study Abroad Program, almost everything is lined up for you. All that is really left is to research your options, be prepared, be smart, and have fun. I have not talked to anyone that regretted going on a Faculty Led Program. This may be a good place to start to see if you are interested in a longer experience. If you are, then it is easy enough to move on to one of the other two options.

Here is my biggest recommendation to improve your time abroad. Do not go alone. Now, I am not saying this for safety reasons (though depending on where you go, that may be a factor to consider), it is a connection home and makes things much easier. I am fairly independent person by nature, and I thought I would be fine alone. By the end of the trip I was wishing that I wasn't. I am not saying that people there were not polite and friendly, but it is a form of support that often goes undervalued. This is automatically taken care of if you participate in a Faculty Led Program or a Study Abroad Program. In a Faculty program you will be surrounded by students from your university and in a Study Abroad Program they people might be much more varied, but they will still be people you are connected with.

To be perfectly honest, I would not recommend an exchange program to most people. For many, I feel that one of the other two options would be a better choice. I needed to be challenged, I needed to stand on my own, and I needed to be pushed. Even with it being exactly what I wanted, I would have had a much harder time without the support from my family. This is very important if you plan to go on an exchange. Make sure that you have a support structure back home and that you have a way to access it. I was using skype frequently in order to communicate back home and gain support when it was needed. Without this, you will have a much harder time.

Throughout my trip I have run into logistical problems with my home university again and again. I do not know if this is due to a lack of research on my part, if I have not been clear in my intentions, if I made assumptions I was not aware of, or what the source of the problems has been. I do have a recommendation to help with anything that happens. Keep your emails. All of them. Every email that involved anything with your time abroad, save it. That may sound obvious, but there will be things you thought unimportant that may become very important at a later time. If fact, don't just keep them, back them up somewhere else as well. I have had several emails that have been corrupted, accidentally deleted, or otherwise misplaced. I hope you have enjoyed reading about my journey and that I have, in at least some way, helped you prepare for yours.

No Returns Once Opened

Hey everyone, I am back in the USA and in one, relatively, functional piece. This will just be a short post this week, but I should be able to write more frequently once everything has settled a little bit. This post is mainly to let everyone know I am alive and none the worse for wear. There were no problems coming back, it was just a very long journey. After a good nights sleep and some good food, I am ready to start getting back into the swing of things here. That primarily means readjusting to the USA and getting everything squared away so that I can graduate and get a job.

I did not experience any difficulties but I may have just been lucky. For anyone traveling internationally in the future there is something you should be aware off. If you did not already know, most countries will permit you a 90 day stay with your USA Passport. Any longer than that and other arrangements have to be made. In my case, I had to file for a residence permit in the city of Braunschweig. Now, none of this is new information but here is the part you may not know., because I sure didn't. Upon your return to the USA, they say I was gone longer than 90 days and requested my paperwork. For me, I simply showed them the residence permit that I had received upon completion of all the paperwork and processing. I had no idea that they would want to see that, so I was very glad I had decided to hang onto it. So, just be aware that you may need your visa information on the return to the USA and not just during your stay. That's all for today. See you later.

Last Stanza

So I am back, punctual as ever. Things got really crazy for a bit there when some of the places seemed to have lost my reservations. I am just glad that I called ahead to double check. Today I thought I would rant a little bit about the classes and tests that I took here in Germany. I hope that this might help others in the future make a more informed decision about their schedules.

I regret nothing in my choice of classes and schedule during my time here in Braunschweig, but it certainly was difficult. What it really comes down to is what you want to get from your semester, because I had already completed all of my course requirements in Wyoming, with the exception of the time abroad, I only need to transfer three credits in order to graduate. A brief side note here, the credit system in Europe is different from that in the USA. Every two credits at Braunschweig is worth a little more than one credit at UW. I honestly think that having several classes in German was a huge help and speed up my language development quite a bit, but I did not think it would be so difficult. It was very hard, even when they were topics that I was fairly familiar with.

It was hard to follow in the classes but I was shocked when I got to the tests. I had a really hard time with even the simplest of my classes during finals. I was really not expecting that. Apparently, the language gap was large enough that I was not able to truly understand the points that were being emphasized during the lectures. There is also the matter of the Tutorials. I was lead to believe, once informed about them at all, that they were optional and of little import. Turns out that only the first statement is true. They are optional, but in the Tutorials they go over practice problems, old tests, and complete exercises to build on the students knowledge. There is also a place on campus, I learned 3 days before my last test, that you can go and get old exams for your classes.

Now, this was really hard for me to come to grips with, but you should not expect to pass all of your classes. Especially if you are taking them in German. I am not saying that you cannot pass. If you are more fluent in German than I, then this might be another matter entirely. I was just floored by all the difficulties I had with my classes and their exams, even though they were subjects I had previously studied. To anybody using my blog as a guide, I would not recommend taking classes in German unless you are really looking for a challenge. I am not saying that it cannot be done. I think that the levels of stress that it can add to an already strange time and place might be more than it is worth.

That is it for today. In fact, this might be the last post until I get back to the USA. Today I am heading back down to Bavaria and checking into a Hotel a little east of Munich. This weekend I am attending a Knights Tournament at Kaltenberg, Monday I return to Braunschweig and check out of my apartment, and on Tuesday I am in the air on the way home. If I don't get a chance before then. Thanks for reading, and see you on the other side.

End of the Tunnel

Well, there are now only seven days before my plane back to the USA, and I cannot stress how excited I am to be going home. Honestly, it is hard to believe that I have been here for almost 5 months now. There have been some really good experiences and some rough patches as well, but it has definitely been an eyeopening experience in my life. It has been very interesting experiencing another country and culture first hand like this. I am not saying that Germany is drastically different from the USA, but it is different enough to be very challenging at times. More than anything else, I feel I have developed a much greater respect for the international students visiting the USA and the challenges that they face.

There is no way that I could have truly appreciated the difficulties that International Students go through without my time here in Germany. Even with my German skills vastly improved, there are days where it is just a massive drain to deal with everything in German. There are many times where you cannot help but feel alienated and alone. I think that I have done well and prepared the best that I could, and even so there were some very hard times. For any students reading this in the future. I do not care where you are from, but take the time to introduce yourself to someone you know to me an international student. They are often great people and would love to be invited to hang out. Many will be eager to learn about you and just as excited to talk about their home. They seem like small things, but that is how you make friends around the world and it can mean so much to them.

During the last week I had a sudden realization. I had been having a really rough day with my language skills. It was just one of those days where my brain did not want to find the words, form the sentences, or pronounce words properly. I was sitting on the bus headed for my apartment when I noticed a couple speaking sign language from the corner of my eye. I watched them for a moment before it really hit me. All of these feelings and small bits of depression I had experienced during my time here were do to the fact that I could not properly communicate and I could not always understand people or make my self properly understood. That single fact is what cause most of my homesickness and loneliness that I experienced while in Germany.

I thought to myself, the hearing impaired suffer from this everyday. It does not matter where they are from or what language they speak, the can have a hard time with basic communication with the majority of the population. I am not trying to say that these people are crippled and should be pitied, my goal is not to offend anyone. Once I was home, I did a little research and found that I was right. Many  people with hearing impairment of one kind or another feel alienated and separate from the rest of society. It is not unheard of for a person fall away from the majority of their friends simply because they have a hard time hearing. I do not mean to climb onto my soap box and start preaching about how everyone should live their lives, but this just does not sit right with me.

I have always wanted to learn sign language, but that conversation that I saw on the bus has really lit a fire in me. This is something I cannot pursue full tilt immediately upon my return, as I have to finish my schooling and begin the next chapter of my life, but there are steps that I plan on taking as soon as I get home. There are multiple sources online that can be utilized, a number of books that can be purchased online, sign language classes at community colleges, and there are entire communities online to help people develop sign language online and connect with chat partners. There are many options and I am excited to start looking into them.

tI know this blog does not have any kind of a following, but I would like to pose a challenge to anyone that follows me this far in my journey. Take at least a single step towards learning sign language. Even if you never get past the research phase, this will give you a better understanding of what the possibilities are. Even learning to say hello and ask how someone is doing could mean the world to someone. It is not difficult and I think it is a worthwhile goal. Now that I have ranted for the entirety of this post, I will be ending it, but fear not. I have finished my last exam and will now have ample free time to write several more posts before my return home. I do not know if this will make a difference to anyone but myself but I'm doing it anyway. Tomorrow I plan to discuss finals and ex-matriculation.

. Gute Nact.

CHAOS!!!!

So there are just three weeks left for my time in Germany. It is unbelievable that I have been here almost five months. Anyway I think that the next few posts will, in all likelihood, be short like this one. I know, finally he has run out of things to say. Nope, just less time to say it in. I am neck deep in the paperwork and studying necessary to end my time here at Braunschweig. I am doing my best to stay sane and enjoy my time here. I am getting more and more excited to return home. If fact, it has become a bit of a problem. I am having a harder time falling asleep and staying asleep and my concentration is in ruins. I thought end of semesters in the US were bad, well now I know better. All I can do is keep working and do my best. Until next week. Gute Nacht.

A Few Points of Interest

So things are starting to move very rapidly here again as I approach the end of the semester, finals, and the end of my trip. It is very hard to believe that I halve already been here for nearly four months and that there are only five weeks and counting. I m also trying to get things settled enough to report. Anyway, as things go I will be providing information on the ex-matriculation process here at Braunschweig, but for today, I just wanted to point out some things that I have found interesting during my time here that I never would have considered before.

One thing that I have found truly amazing during my time in Germany is the wide number of languages that you encounter on a daily (or semi-daily) basis. It may just be the people that I have been around during my stay, but I am regularly hearing Chinese, Russian, Spanish, and Italian being spoken around me. I do not claim to have learned anything about any of the languages, struggling enough with just German, but I have gotten to the point where I think that I can identify Russian when it is spoken. That may not sound like much, but when you combine those languages with the other people from Korea, Japan, Poland, Switzerland, Sweden, Iraq, and several others that I have forgotten (not to mention all of the different dialects of German that you can encounter at a University) it all just become a giant jumble of incomprehensible sounds. I feel that being able to identify any of that is cool.

Continuing on the topic of the languages, the variety of the German language has really surprised me. It was the biggest problem while I was down in Munich for my language course. I would be doing just fine in my classes and then the second that I stepped out the door, I couldn't understand what people were saying. In the end, it was good for me because it has made it easier to understand some of the different dialects I have encountered here. Oddly enough, the place where I have the hardest time understanding people is not in my Chemistry lectures (which is a discussion for another time), but it is actually in my German Language Classes.  It is hard to understand fluent German speakers when they really get going on a topic. For me, it is even harder to understand students with a heavy accent speaking in halting and incomplete sentences. We are all here to learn, but I just never foresaw such difficulty communicating in the classroom.

I am just going to discuss only one more thing on this post (for the sake of any poor suckers reading this). I am going to talk about weather. That's right, the weather. Well more specifically about some extreme weather. In the past few weeks there has been some serious flooding in middle and lower Germany. I thought this was worth mentioning, because while I was in the USA I never considered things like that happening. Yeah, it is a natural occurrence, but we don't hear about that kind of thing on the other side of the world unless it is REALLY extreme. We don't here about the occasional flooding. Th only reports that reach us are those about massive hurricanes. I knew this was happening, but it never really hit me until I had to cancel a weekend trip due to canceled trains. This was a strange experience.

 Every day I get a dozen small reminders that no matter where they are or what language is spoken, people (for the most part) are just people. The old generation complains about the younger, everyone is complaining about taxes, and everyone likes watching TV. Unfortunately for us, the rest of the world has no way of learning this. All that they get to see are the news reports about the Bad, the Violent, and the Crazy parts of the US. I hope that I have done my job and gotten you to think a little bit today. With such insights, I think I should be paid more.... or anything really. That's all for now. Guten Abend

This Post was supposed to be up earlier, but I have been struggling with Blogger this week.

Returning to the Regular Schedule

So I had not realized it had been almost a month since I posted on my blog. Oops. Time can speed away from you. So I was sick for a bit there and then I spent a great deal of time helping my family plan their trip to Europe, and once they arrived, I did not have much time for anything. Anyway, here is a short summary (I hope) of what I have been up to the past few weeks.

My mother, brother, and aunt flew into Copenhagen Denmark because we have distant family in that area. It was wonderful to see them and everything was made much smoother by having a place to stay with our relatives. Unfortunately, due to the time it that was spent in Denmark, my family only got to be in Braunschweig for about three days. To top things off, the weather was cold and rainy for all of them. At that point, my brother and Aunt flew back to the US and my girlfriend arrived. Naturally the weather became a thousand times better and we had nothing but sunshine the whole time that she was here. While she was here, we all had a wonderful time exploring Braunschweig together and I was very sad to see them leave.

I am trying to keep this short until I can get back into the swing of blogging. What I really want to relay here is how wonderful it was to have family visit. It really did help me deal with some of the homesickness that I was experiencing and gave me part of my old life back. Also, it was a very helpful reminder of just how much I have learned and how far I have come. I may be far from fluent and even further from professional fluency (Chemistry and Engineering talk), but the extent of my skills really hit me while I was showing my family around, helping them order, and helping the understand random signs around the city and in the parks. They also arrived at the ideal time during my trip, right at the three month mark. I could already tell that I was worn out and that the three month dip was going to be a bad one. My last post was just as I was starting down into it and it would have been much more difficult alone.

If you can manage it. You should find a way to have friends of family visit, and if it comes at the three month mark, all the better. That is all for now. See you next week.