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To me walking off a plane onto the soil of another country
is nothing new; I’ve done it countless times before in my life to the point
where to me it feels like I got into an airplane and just circled the airport
for 10 hours before landing in the same airport. To many, crossing into states
seems like travelling to a new country but to me it feels like nothing more
than crossing a street. Now I’ve made what will be, at least for a while, the
final transition in a long line of relocation and from what I’ve seen so far
this transition may be the worst. All the travelling took a massive impact on
my life to the point where I am nothing in almost anyway like those around me, I
am multilingual with several languages, I consider myself German-American, I talk
differently from those around me, even some aspects of personality seem bizarre
to the friends I’ve made. This is especially strange to me because throughout
my life my parents always referred to Illinois as home even though I had never
been there for more than 3 months at a time. Even now as I get used to the
dorms its hard to get to know the neighbors when they just call me “Germany”
and forget my real name later. Its hard for me to believe that even in the
place I’m supposed to call “home” I’m still the foreigner. Hopefully it will
get better