My first time abroad was actually also the first time out of the Midwest, and boy was it a shocker! My family didn’t really go on vacations besides out East to my Aunt’s house in Pennsylvania, so I hadn’t seen a lot besides corn fields and museums during school breaks. While that was a great way to grow up, I had no idea what to even think (or even to think) about anywhere far away. I was and still am in general a curious person, but as a child I was focused on school and extra curriculars like girl scouts, school clubs, and 4-H. With time I got more and more into music, and little did I know, music would open up the world to me via orchestra tours, gigs, festivals, jobs, etc.

So it was that my first chance to visit abroad came Junior year of high school, when my youth orchestra had a tour planned to Japan. Somehow we managed to scrape together the funds so that I could go and baaaam, there I was, flying for the first time, eating foods that I had no idea what they were, walking down streets smaller than I’d ever seen, looking at signs/labels in a language that you can’t just guess what it says, and being surrounded by people who looked and spoke much differently that I was used to. I couldn’t have had a much more different place to go to (safely) than I did for my first time abroad. It was a culture shock, to say the least, but we all ate it up:

• We laughed at what to us seemed like silly quirks and traditions (like musing over a covered object in our one host’s house that we were dying to know what it was, the “peace” sign in photos, etc.)
• We tried on the local garb (we got to wear komonos one night to a street festival)
• We hoped we didn’t offend anyone (note: don’t blow your nose in public and try everything)
• We wondered constantly what everything was (I once had a soup with something long, thin, slimy, and clear-colored in it…)
• We hoped we didn’t eat anything deadly (literally, when we were certain, as far as we could understand based on our host daughter’s translation, our host mom cooked a big feast for us with puffer fish as the main course!)
• And, in general, we soaked up everything we could about the new culture (photo sticker booths everywhere!).

I even started my first journal on that trip per recommendation of our chaperones (who also tried to coach us on etiquette and local behavior).

My world was changed. My eyes were opened, at least a little. I wanted more.

Later on, during my university studies, an opportunity to spend some time abroad came along again. Twice! The first time was to Europe for an orchestra tour to Spain my Sophomore year, for which a friend of mine and I practically begged the conductor to go on, since we were pretty low down in that orchestra and were borderline not scheduled to play in enough pieces in the concerts to make it worth us going. But we lucked out, I again scraped together all that I had as a poor student to go, and we had an awesome (and stress-free) time in about 8 cities in 10 days. I was enamoured and intrigued by Europe.

The next year, my Junior year, was the year that you study abroad if you intend too, and at first I wasn’t sure if I could because my German wasn’t very good yet, but I luckily made the cut – I did an exchange year in Freiburg, Germany, with about 50 other German students from the Midwest. This year deserves at least one post of its own, just to explain what it was like for the first time to really live in Europe and what we all experienced in that year, so I will leave it at this for now: That year was one of the best of my life to this day. I made life-long friends, experienced so much about people, culture, travel, and the world that I believe I returned a changed-for-the-better person, at least to some degree.

This year was also a game-changer for my future, although I didn’t know it at the time. I figured that that year would be the last time I was going to be in Europe for a long, long time, so we travelled a lot. But, upon finishing my studies in the States, I realized yet again that I wanted to experience more.

Stay tuned for future posts in my “In the Beginning” series to discover how life lead me to Hamburg!