Anyway, on August 15, 1995, a Boeing 737 flew me into this crazy country (I still remember the look of that luggage check officer's face, when he saw my hard disk on his screen). I have to admit, it was a pretty weird feeling, arriving there at the Airport in Little Rock, Arkansas, and knowing absolutely nobody. And suddenly, that man over there is waving at me, and I understand: Cool, this must be him - my host father for the next year. On the way from Little Rock to my new home town - Hot Springs - we stopped at (I think it was) Baskin Robbins, and my host father Bill Black ordered two root beer floats for him and me. I liked that stuff so much that I decided to open a root beer company as soon as I would get back to Germany, and I'm still seriously thinking about doing that.
Of course, I had trouble with the language in the beginning. I had learned English in
school for five years, but that had been
British English.
Now, I was confronted with
all those American terms - and with SLANG. [Excuse me for a second, I gotta go to the
bathroom...........................................okay.] The first two weeks, every second sentence I
said was: "What does ... mean?" A thing that was very hard to understand for me and the
other exchange students on my school, was the necessity to use different language around
different people. One time, while I was telling about Germany in American Government, I
interrupted myself in the middle of a sentence and said "oh shit, I don't know how to
say that in English", and the whole class was laughing, and I didn't even know why.
Fortunately, my teacher was pretty cool.
In Germany (and most Europe, I guess), we don't have actual cusswords
because there aren't any words that are prohibited to say. That kind of takes the fun out
of it. I like it more the way it is here in America.
Now (July 15, 1996), while I'm writing this, my last week in the States has begun.
And I'm sentimentally thinking back about all those different experiences I have made here.
What I'm probably gonna miss most is the open-mindness of the Americans. In Germany, people
in a public bus would sit next to each other for two hours without having said a word. Here,
people talk to each other on the street.
Ooops, I wanted to talk about myself,
not about my America year. Okay, my hobbies are camping,
hanging around with punks, Computer
programming, talking in Newsgroups, and mixing together all the food on my plate before eating
it. I like beer, root beer, homemade mashed potatos, and turtles. I've got two brothers (15 and 8)
and one little sister (2). Everybody thinks, it must be cool to be the oldest brother, but I
think, it sucks.
I'm still going to school when I'm back in Germany. It is a high school featuring math and
science stuff. That school is about 5 miles from my house. I used to get there on my
bicycle because you have to be 18 to get a driving licence in Germany. Yesterday, however,
I passed the test over here and got my American "driver's license". According to the German
law, I can drive with that licence
in Germany for one whole year, although I'm not 18 yet!
Okay, I think, I've written enough. BTW, this is my email address, in case you want to write me:
zoll@uni.de
visitors since 10th July 2000
P. S. Long time has passed since I have written the
stuff
above. I've become
wise and old now and thus could tell you a lot more about my life. However,
my wisdom enables me to comprehend that even I myself am so almost-infinitely
matterless and small compared to our almost-infinitely powerful and large
universe that the only possible conclusion I can come up with is to strongly
encourage you to always keep in mind
the answer to the ultimate question about life, the universe and
everything:
42
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