Once upon a time, I dove headfirst into a graduate program in a foreign country with no idea what to expect. Even though I’m now in the sixth and last class of my first semester, I still feel a bit like I was tossed overboard during a voyage across the Sea of the Unknown. Luckily, when I hit the water, my competitive swimming instincts kicked in and I was able to keep from drowning.
This program is – to put it lightly – unique. Instead of taking four or five classes simultaneously over the course of four months, each class is condensed into a three-week module. For three weeks we live and breathe just one subject, juggling long daily lectures with constant group projects and sometimes even week-long field trips, delving ever-deeper into the topic. Then abruptly it ends, and we’re expected to surface from the depths of that subject in time to immediately dive into the next subject. It’s dizzying, and enough to give a person something resembling the bends.
Most of the classes up to this point have been theoretical in nature, often blending social and environmental sciences together and making me question everything I know, especially because some days I understand absolutely nothing even though I recognize the words coming out of the lecturer’s mouth as English. We occasionally also have excursions, which are my favorite because we leave the brick-and-mortar classroom behind and instead opt for the lecture hall that’s walled only by trees and roofed by nothing but sky. Information sticks in my slippery mind so much easier when I’m exchanging breaths with the forest.
Recently, I experienced an unforgettable excursion into the wilds of the Nationalpark Bayerischer Wald, in one of the most invaluable class-based experiences I’ve had during my years of higher education. I got back so recently that the smell of woodsmoke still clings to my hair and skin as I write. The scent managed to impregnate every single piece of clothing I took with me, cleverly finding a way to hitch a ride from one edge of southern Germany to the other. I would be irritated by its insistent presence, but this unmistakable perfume always evokes such strong memories of past wild nights and forest adventures that I only wish it would stay with me forever.
Basically when I signed up for this module, I also volunteered to travel clear across Germany and sleep in rustic cabins in mid-February with 23 other graduate students I barely knew. It seemed like a fool’s decision, but after four months of being in my program, I figured it was high time to make an effort to befriend some classmates. Having over 100 classmates in each of the first three modules had caused my introverted brain to short-circuit, resulting in a long period of me flitting around the edges of an increasingly tight-knit group of students, like a moth drawn in by the firelight but too cautious to get closer.
So I showed up early that Monday morning, clutching my borrowed sleeping bag, expectations, and what I hoped was sufficient clothing to stay warm for the week. People slowly appeared, all in various stages of alertness and most gripping steaming cups of coffee or freshly-baked pastries from the corner bakery. It became increasingly clear as our numbers swelled that I was not alone in the “I don’t know anyone” boat, which was a comforting realization that would solidify later that night during the ubiquitous Get-to-Know-You games, the kind that are childish on the surface but also fun as hell.
During the day there were of course many hours of lectures and things, which were fascinating and thought-provoking in their own right, but the true value of the excursion lay in experiencing nature with this small group of fellow treehuggers and our fearless leader Marco. We spent so much time outside tracking lynx and learning how to fire tranquilizer darts that my skin was constantly colder than a Canadian winter. It probably didn’t help that we constantly played in the snow, getting into impromptu snowball wars and building 8-foot-tall snowmen, but the sheer childlike fun of it bonded us together faster than any group projects ever could.
Our cabins, although beautiful and unique, were cold and dark, so every night after ravenously consuming our dinners we stayed put around the enormous 8-meter table in the main lodge. Being in forced contact with so many people for an entire week had the potential to be exhausting, but this was one instance where it worked in our favor. People mingled, instead of staying within the comfortable groups of people they already knew. Different people struck up conversations with me about their experiences with things like learning to drive stick, visiting tropical forests in New Zealand, and SCUBA diving with whale sharks. We spoke and drank until long after the weak winter sun had set, playing everything from Uno to Greed to the Name Game. My personal favorite was Spoons, a game that my family plays every year at Christmas (and also one that tends to get pretty violent).
One of the things I love most about being overseas is learning how all humans are fundamentally the same. We can grow up 5000 miles away from each other and be raised in cultures with completely disparate societal norms, but then still giggle helplessly together at the same jokes. Sometimes, against all odds, Europeans even unwittingly make the same jokes I’ve made in the past – and in English no less, a language that usually isn’t even their first. This happened twice during our Spoons game, in a strange bastardization of deja-vu:
“Spoons? We should play Forks. Or maybe Sharp Knives.”
“You have S-P-O-O-N? That’s okay. We can pretend we can’t spell and play Spoonseseses instead.”
Even more surreal is when you meet someone on a different continent whose personality was cut from the exact same cloth as yours. This has only happened a handful of times in my life, but it’s one of the most gratifying human experiences in this world. On the surface, you may share nothing with this person – not mother tongues nor life experience nor cultural expectations – but none of it matters because you can laugh at the same things and know exactly what the other person is thinking without asking.
It’s a beautiful thing to look into eyes that have seen events and worlds that you can only imagine, and still see yourself reflected back in them.
Window Seat Odyssey 
Profound insights verbalized, Jill Terese!
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Love your writings!
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