I'm also starting to settle into Bonn. I can mostly find my way around, at least the area nearest the AIB, and I already adjusted to taking the bus every day. I must admit, I thought I wouldn't like taking the bus, and I was nervous the first day, but it has been surprisingly pleasant and uncomplicated. I might even consider taking the bus more often when I get back to College Station; if I can manage it here, surely I can also manage in a place with which I am already familiar, and where I speak the same language?
During the past week I have slowly gotten more comfortable with my host family. I tend to be shy and reserved at first, so it usually takes me a bit longer to get to know people. In the last two days I've been able to communicate a handful of sentences in German. Today my host mom even teased me about the way I was holding my spoon, and as anyone knows, you are not really a family unless you can tease one another.
It has been really nice to spend time with a lot of the people on this trip. Believe it or not, before coming I was nervous about not really connecting or making friends with anyone (although I didn't want to say anything before, for fear I would sound like the reticent, painfully shy introvert that I sometimes am), but I was extremely happy to find that everyone has been very friendly, and I feel well on the way towards being very good friends with some.
Yesterday, I was given a huge honor. I am now in charge of “schlepping” Reveille around and taking pictures of her doing fun foreign things. Although I am afraid I have already experienced a failure in my duties (I did not bring her to the Haus der Geschichte today), I have introduced her to Joy and Djenga, the Border Collie mix dogs of my host family.
Speaking of the Haus der Geschichte, I really enjoyed being able to see things I had previously learned but from the German perspective, rather than the American perspective. I even got a little choked up during some parts, trying to imagine what it must have been like. When I got home I had a conversation with my host mom about it, and she mentioned that she had had a German History teacher who really pounded them with the fact that Hitler was bad. That reminded me of how sometimes in history classes I had felt guilty for past moral ambiguities that the US had committed, like Hiroshima or the Vietnam War, and she said that even though there are black spots on a country's history, it's still important to remember, which is basically what Dr. Wasser said earlier on the tour. Sometimes in history class I would feel almost ashamed to be an American, but I think it's still ok to have patriotism as long as you recognize the mistakes of the past and try not to repeat them, like the Germans with Vergangenheitsbewältigung.
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