Für das hessische Schulamt musste ich neulich einen Erfahrungsbericht über meine 3 Monate in Kanada schreiben. In einem Anflug des verbalen Exhibitionismus dachte ich mir, wenn ich mir schon die Mühe damit gemacht hab, können das doch auch mehr Leute lesen als die zwei, drei Leute vom Schulamt. Falls es überhaupt so viele gelesen haben.
Lange Rede, kurzer Sinn: Hier Teil 1 meines Berichts! Falls jemand gerne eine deutsche Übersetzung hätte, mache ich die gerne noch.
Three months in Canada
First of
all: This report is not easy for me to write because it’s almost impossible to
summarize three entire months in a couple of pages. These twelve weeks have
been filled with so many amazing and unforgettable moments I will probably not
be able to find decent words for. But I will try and talk about the most
important things.
Going on a
student exchange has always been my biggest dream, so when I heard about the
possibility to participate in a reciprocal exchange with Canada I immediately
applied. My teacher helped me fill out the application, which was quite long
indeed, and in April I finally received an e-mail stating that a Canadian
exchange partner had been found for me, but that I still had to wait for her to
consent to the exchange. A few weeks later I was very excited when I got
another e-mail confirming that she had accepted me as her exchange partner.
After that time went by very fast and soon it was August 25: The day of my
flight to Canada! I was somewhat sad as I had to leave all my friends and
family behind, but the fact that I would be in Canada in less than a day and
meet my host family for the first time almost made me very excited and pretty
nervous, too. After all, I had never met my host family in person and was
scared we would not get along with each other that well.
But when I
finally arrived at Edmonton International Airport, that fear turned out to be
completely wrong. My host family was really nice and even though I was pretty
shy and didn’t talk a lot at first, they asked me lots of questions and talked
to me as much as possible. I immediately felt like a member of the family!
The drive
to my host family’s home was about 45 minutes long, which meant that my family
practically lived in the immediate vicinity of the airport. I say this as though
they lived right next to the airport’s runway, which they obviously didn’t,
because everything in Canada is so much bigger than in Europe. The roads are
almost twice as wide as the ones in Germany and there are many open spaces. Car
rides as long as four or five hours are completely normal for Canadians, and
when I told my host family that Berlin is a nine hour drive away from where I
live, they only said “Oh, that’s pretty close, eh?” Well, knowing that Canada’s
capital Ottawa is at least a 36 hour drive from Edmonton, I guess distances
between cities in Europe really are short!
The first
few days in my “home away from home” were spent discovering the surroundings,
like shopping at West Edmonton Mall (which is North America’s largest mall),
spending some time at a beautiful lake, and going to our High School to choose
my classes. My host family even took me to the Rocky Mountains for a couple of
days! Seeing the Rockies for the first time overwhelmed me, I would have never
thought they were this big or beautiful! My host family and I went shopping in
the town of Banff, went to see Lake Louise and Moraine Lake, visited an amusement
park and stopped in Calgary on the way back. The vacation was amazing because I
got to see how beautiful the Canadian landscape is. And, even if it might sound
weird, I think I bonded with my exchange partner and host family over the long
car rides. Usually I am not a very talkative person, but if you’re stuck in a
vehicle for hours at a time, you can’t help but talk to them. So this trip even
had nice “side effects”!
Tadaaa! :3 Teil 2 folgt bald.
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