Excerpts from Kim Yourchock's Letters Home:

I didn't really think about how long I was going to be away from home, and it only hit me once I had been here for a week or two. My parents had been supportive all along, but in the winter before I left, they became more hesitant because of events worldwide, and it was a struggle to reconcile our fears with the possibility of a life-changing experience abroad. Preparing for study abroad was a very haphazard process. I did not have a long perio dof preparation, but I think that is the only way that I would have been able to leave. If I had spent a long time mulling over how challenging it would be to live abroad and away from everyone I love, I would never have gotten on the plane.

One of the first things I noticed regarding the people of Germany was that whenever I was riding the bus and an elderly person got on, a younger person would always get up and give that person his or her seat. I thought it was very admirable that the youth had so much respect for their elders. I was also shocked and appalled the first time I walked through the bus station at night and was disgustingly yelled and whistled at. It was offensive, as well as very frightening, because when someone would approach me they would be speaking or yelling in a language that I do not understand that well, so telling them to leave me alone was very difficult.

Even the things that I thought were similar to home were completely different. For example, I went grocery shopping. It was a little weird because everything was (of course) in German, but the store was laid out similarly to a store at home. But then, as soon as I began to get comfortable and had picked out my groceries, I went to the checkout only to learn that they only took cash and they did not give you grocery bags. It sounds like a small inconvenience but when everything I try to do includes one or more little problems, they can add up.