Ok. Back in Germany. Again. Everytime I get to a new place, it feels as if the old place were just a dream, a shadowy fuzzy memory that I'm not sure actually happened. It feels like I never left.
Seeing the boyfriend was good. Leaving him was not as hard as I thought it would be. We'll see each other in a few months. Him leaving Europe was the best thing he could have done for me, because just as it was easy to cling to other Californians here, it was even easier for me to cling to him. When he left, I was forced to put myself out there and meet new people on my own. Which turned out to be more fun than I ever imagined it could be.
But seeing him again allowed me to drop right back into my old ways, and now that I am back in Germany, without him, I am faced with the task of putting myself out there again. I didn't realize how hard it is for me to do that until I just went back and found everything so easy. I had my friends, my boyfriend, my family, all wrapped up into a little package with no effort on my part. I could shop, order at a restaurant, ask for directions--anything I needed to do was easy because I understood how it works.
Now that I'm back, everything is hard again. I don't know how things work, I can't read all the signs, I don't know how to say what I need to say. This morning, I had to go to the Bürgerbüro (literally means citizens office, kind of like the DMV or City Hall) to pick up my residence permit. Just figuring out which room to go to and how the waiting system works was an ordeal in itself.
And classes have started. I am terrified of my science classes I must take auf Deutsch. Welcome to the hard times...but the harder I work for something, the better it feels once it's accomplished.
Nothing good comes easy, right?
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