. t h r e e m o n t h s .

twentyseventhofapril

My hands were trembling terribly, I was shaking nervously.

Now it was almost exactly six months ago that my school had introduced two exchange programs to us. Nearly half a year ago, I decided to participate in the one that would last three months, wrote a short announcement in which I introduced myself superficially, received a huge amount of responses per email, chose my partner, and stalked her on Facebook.

Six months; it was a great amount of time but at the same time it wasn't that much- all these weeks weren't enough time to reassure myself of everything going to be well.

So, there I was, standing, wobbling knees, chewing my nails slightly, angst radiating off of me, my mother on my right and my brother on my left. Waiting impatiently, looking at the blank terminal where she would arrive soon, in a matter of time, just a few minutes.

When we write on the Internet we have so much time to consider our statements, questions, responses. We have time to think about how we want to present ourselves, we can upload the pictures we want to, photoshopped or not. We can click the like button on things we don't really like, pretend to like to please the expectations of others. Look up funny statuses to post, comment things we would never in real life. We can conceal our true selves and the others couldn't have the slightest clue.

But when you see someone in person you can't just look up facts of their favourite singer, and hear their favourite song before singing out the lyrics with them, agreeing or disagreeing with them that this song is or isn't the best on the album, you can't look up quotes of their favourite books and debate on the meaning, you can't laugh about funny scenes of their favourite films when you didn't see it, -you are forced to be honest and confess that you didn't even hear of this artist, song, album, book, movie, whatever yet. You could always lie but that wouldn't be very smart, as your following conversation would be based on that very theme and you just have to spill the beans and speak up, what you could've done earlier, lying would just make it more embarrassing. At least for me, because I suck at lying and everyone sees through me when I do.

My heartbeat exaggerated with every tick of the hand of my new ice watch, and I had to concentrate on my breathing, now isn't the time to become a panic stricken wreck.

The first impression is something important. Some people say that they decide if they like you or not in the first five to ten seconds that they see you. I always asked myself how I looked like to others. You are not what you think of yourself, but what are you then?

You can't really decide how you want to be in others eyes, you can't tell what they think and have to try very hard to affect it. And it is also hard to meet your own critical mental picture of yourself. And even if I normally would never confess this openly to anyone, I care more about what others think of me than what I think of myself. I would pay everything I didn't posses to crawl into the thoughts of others. Yet I encourage my friends to be themselves, to ignore what the haters say, but I do the exact opposite- I hide myself behind a facade and take critic of everyone to heart. Considering this I came to the conclusion that referring to opinions of others and finding faults in yourself I was a hypocrite. One thing that is also weird is that I only remember all negative comments I ever received but just a few compliments that really hit home-

However, this endless stream of thoughts was interrupted by people slowly falling into the arms of their family members, exclaiming how much their grandchildren or nephews or whatever relative grew, kissing their lovers, embracing their friends, greeting their acquaintances, shaking the hands of their business partners.

I scanned all faces that would reveal themselves as their owners stepped in my vision. I hoped that we would get along. Hoped that we would become close, tell each other secrets, be there for each other, like the sister I never had. I would have an additional family member for three months and I would be one for the same amount of time. This seemed surreal. I couldn't realise the fact that I was actually doing this.

I looked at my mother who flashed me a smile, bringing her hand to my shoulder, then at my brother who just tilted his head up and shortly after down again.

I found myself wondering what they were thinking, this didn't affect them as much as us. How must she feel? Probably worse than me, even if I can't imagine. My nerves are killing me, I brought my hands to my face, feeling the heat of my cheeks and my forehead.

I still kept an eye out for her, but couldn't spot her. I pulled at the sleeves of my cardigan, and began to tap my left feet up and down, folding my arms in front of my chest. I never was an impatient person, but in this moment I found myself not being able to hear another strike of my watch.

My sight was still fixated on the terminal of our local airport and then, she was there, her black suitcase rolling behind her, throwing away one of my greatest worries- she came, she decided to go through this with me and didn't ditch her flight.

A big grin made it on my face, asI pushed a loose strand of my now too long brown hair behind my ear, my worries pushing themselves into the back of my brain, concentrating on her.

"Welcome to Germany.", I said, as she kissed me on my right then on my left cheek how it's courtesy in France. She did the same to my mother and brother and it was just nice to finally see her in real life.

From what pictures I had seen of her, what she had told me about her, and from the likes displayed on her Facebook page I already had an image of her. We already talked in chats, but not from person to person, face to face. When I heard her voice for the first time, the smile on my face became bigger. It reminded me of something I couldn't put my finger on.

I asked her about how her flight went, if she has had trouble with changing the plane and if she coped well with getting her suitcase and all the casual things. My mother asked her questions about her family and how she felt now that she had arrived at her destination.

We got into the tram that was packed with people, but finding free places anyway. After three stations we were in the quiet city centre, the Sunday sun shining brightly in our faces as we got out. We decided to walk the short rest of the way, showing her a bit around of where she would live the next few months.

We got home and I showed her the rooms, starting off with the room that we would share. My mum placed her suitcase into the spacious white room, that had enough place to have a lot of furniture in it, one of my walls covered in black and white pictures, the others with bookshelves and a big window, also the door to the terrace, letting a lot of light in.

"So, if you want to, I can help you unpack, before we eat? We also have plans for later, but first I'll let you arrive.", I tried to speak slower than usual, so that she could understand, she has learned german for three years now, and it's just my second year learning french. She chuckled a bit, and we installed her things.

a/n:

hello :)

so my exchange program is over tomorrow, and i will fly back home. i really want to write about nearly everything that happened, as i want the moments to never leave my mind and figured that if I was going to write it, i could also share it. it's really personal and i thought a lot about publishing it or not but came to the decision that i will just leave out the most personal parts. this was just the first chapter, and until i am going to be finished with <<foreign>> i won't be able to update often. i hope you're going to join me on my journey and that you like the outcome of this. it would be really nice if i knew what you thought about this idea of book :) thank you for reading so far