Report From Saraah Murray, RYE Outbound Student

To begin, when I left Houston it was about 98 degrees Fahrenheit, the sun was shining, and I hadn’t seen rain in about a month (or at least it felt like a month). When I stepped off the plane in Germany, it was about 50 degrees and pouring.  My hot Houston summer instantly ended, and I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into. I wasn’t ready to freeze to death! But all was ok when I saw my host family waiting for me in the airport, waving an American flag! Instantly my doubts I had about coming to Germany vanished. After having a layover in Amsterdam and only hearing Dutch, it was so nice to finally be around German and understand some of what they were saying. However, upon arriving, I didn’t understand much because they talked so much faster than I was used to. We drove home through the rain and then had a typical German breakfast: bread, bread, more bread, an assortment of jams and juices, and butter. I already know I am going to miss the bread here when I have to go back home!
The next few days were hectic, because my host sister was preparing to leave on exchange in Chile! I got to re-live the departure again when we took her to the airport in Frankfurt. Other than that, we have done small half-day trips around the area here in Niedersachsen. One of the really cool things was seeing the Autostadt in Wolfsburg. The Volkswagen HQ is located in Wolfsburg (a town about 20 minutes north of Braunschweig), and right next to the factory there is a huge park that features different types of exhibits for expensive cars. There is also a big area for shows. It’s basically a lot of water fountains and fire and lasers that move and dance to music. It’s too hard to explain, so here’s a photo. The second photo is of the lake right next to the factory. Here we rented the swan paddle boats and rode around the lake.

The Autostadt water show and swan paddle boats.

And then there was my favorite day in Germany so far: the day I got to go to Hamburg with my host brother Leo. My host dad had to work in Hamburg one day, so he took Leo and me to explore for the day. At first it was raining (typical Germany) but then around 11:00 the sun came out. Hamburg is a beautiful city with a great vibe, and I think it is one of my new favorite cities in the world. The architecture is really cool, because half of it is old the other half is modern. The harbor and the Reeperbahn/St. Pauli were my favorite places to go.

After having a few weeks of fun, like mini golfing, traveling to the mountains, eating Spaghettieis, it was time to start school. After graduating American high school already, I was not looking forward to going back into the 11^th grade. Thankfully, my host sister’s friends showed me around the school and helped me to my classes. I’ve actually made a lot of friends! They are mostly former exchange students who were in the USA, so we always talk about the USA and the differences from Germany. They really have helped me to feel a lot more comfortble here. German classes are a lot harder than American high school classes, but I like the challenge. So far my favorite classes are German and English.

Well, I am just so happy to have this amazing opportunity to live in a different country, and it would not be possible without Rotary. I want to thank anyone involved with Rotary for helping me live out my dream. I have a blog where I write about my adventures in much more detail and have many more pictures, so check out sarah-aroundtheworld.tumblr.com if you