Adventure Begins

Howdy! My name is Tessa Bronez and I am a sophomore Biomedical Engineer at Texas A&M University. Tomorrow I will begin my greatest journey as I leave for an entire semester in Bonn, Germany. In preparation for travel I got a flu vaccine, which unfortunately made me sick, so I have had to force myself to pack and prepare for my trip today and yesterday despite wanting to stay in bed all day. Fortunately I have wonderful parents who helped me and who gave me this amazing opportunity in the first place!

The gravity of this trip still has not fully set in. For the most part, the only times I have reflected on how I feel about going have been from questions I get when people find out about my plans. The first one is always “do you speak German?” To which I respond with a lighthearted “nein!” I have started learning some basics on my own, but I am extremely excited to learn German while actually in Germany. I am fascinated by languages (I took 4 years of Latin to give me a head start on the others) and I am looking forward to getting to learn the language through immersion in a community of German speakers.

The second question that I frequently get is “are you nervous about going?” My first instinct is to say yes, because I know that is how I am supposed to feel about something like this. Everything will be different there, and I won’t have the comfort of all the familiar aspects of my home. But when I actually think about this question and search inside myself, I am not nervous at all. I feel like I am restless in the routine ways I have grown accustomed to here, like I have been waiting for some kind of adventure to begin, and it’s finally coming. I think I would feel far more stressed if I were staying here, like there was so much out there that I was missing out on.

The number one thing I am looking forward to on this trip is the people. I love sharing in peoples lives and hearing everyone’s story and the different ways people think. It will be especially interesting to see how the way of life in Germany compares to what I am used to. I am also interested to hear different thoughts that people have about politics, culture, and academics. I have an amazing opportunity to gain an international perspective on my field of study with the trips that the program has coordinated to accompany our classes, and I can’t wait to see just how much I learn from it all.

The idea of studying abroad first struck me in high school when an exchange student from Belgium named Alice stayed with me. Even though I was living at home, she changed the whole atmosphere with her stories and personality and enhanced my perspective on the rest of the world. She is part of our family now, and I refer to her as my Belgian sister. My hope for this trip is that I can connect with my host family in a similar way. The emails I have gotten from them have made me extremely excited to meet them!

This trip is important to me as a discovery of who I am. This experience will allow me to be completely independent and I am excited to see how I will grow as a person because of this. It is also important to me for another reason. In high school, a friend of mine named Ann planned a trip to Europe with me. She spent countless hours researching and planning the precise details of our trip. Everything was exciting with her, and her personality was nothing short of inspiring. She passed away last February and we never got to go together. In some ways I feel like I am taking this trip for her, the adventure she never got to have. I wish we could be embarking together, but I can only hope that in some way part of her will be with me, and that her view from above is better than any view from down here.

I really don’t know what to expect from this trip. I don’t know where this journey will take me, or what I will learn about the world, or what I will discover about myself. But isn’t uncertainty what makes it an adventure?