Vs.
I thought maybe I should say a few words about being back at Mt Holyoke, since I've been away for so long. I also want talk a little bit about the differences between going to school here and going to school in Germany.
Going to Freiburg was definitely the best thing I ever did. Back in the fall before I left for Germany, I was pretty miserable here and I needed to get away for a while. When I returned to campus a week ago yesterday, I couldn't stop smiling. Even the door in the campus center that has had the same squeak for the past 4 years made me smile. For the first time, returning to Mt. Holyoke felt like I was returning home.
I have a large single in a beautiful old dorm with a dining hall, but it's kind of a downgrade from living in an apartment in Germany where I shared the bathroom with 3 other girls instead of 20+. I definitely am glad to have a dining hall again because I don't have to worry about my lack of cooking skills, although I do miss having a kitchen and being able to eat when I wanted. The internet is sooo much better here, even if we have to share it with everyone at UMass (in Germany our internet would randomly shut off all the time, I got shut down every night at 11:23pm, no idea why). I have a lot of "stuff" here: my rug, my TV, my fridge, tons of clothes, a printer, etc. It's nice to be able to live so comfortably, but I also now know that I can live on next to nothing: in Germany I brought just 1 suitcase with me and in India I only had a backpack!
I like Mt. Holyoke because I'm back to being Liz, and not 2817676 like I was at Uni Freiburg. There is much more of a campus/community feel since everyone lives here. The bureaucracy is not nearly as annoying, and even when it is, it's in English so I feel like I can deal with it. It's weird because in Germany all the students were older than me and I felt really young. Here, now that I'm a senior, everyone seems really young to me. There, I lived in an apartment and commuted to class by tram and it made me feel like an adult. Being here kind of feels like I'm going backward because I live in a dorm and I'm told when I have to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
A few things have struck me as strange. First of all, American students (especially at an all women's college) don't care about how they look when they go to class, and it was kind of shocking to see people showing up in pajamas because that would never happen in Germany because students see going to university as a job and dress up for class. When class ended in Germany, everyone knocked on the desks to show appreciation for the professor's lecture. That doesn't happen here and I think it's kind of sad that no one acknowledges the class, and getting up and just leaving feels a little awkward. I'm not sure about this all girls thing either. I hung out with mostly guys in Germany and it was a lot funnier and there was a lot less drama. I don't like actually having to do homework now.
All in all, it's nice to be back though. I kind of feel like I never left.
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