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| Making "Really Good" Friends  “It will never be as you think…,” I told myself while I was preparing for my high school year in Canberra, Australia, and I was imagining all kinds of possible situations – one worse than the other. The knowledge that, in reality, these frightening things would really not happen was rather comforting, and before I flew out, I even became euphoric. This was downright scary! Of course, I did not crash with the airplane, and my luggage was not left behind at the airport in Singapore. Also, my host siblings did not turn out to be jealous. I neither landed in a garbage dumplike household nor in the middle of nowhere, and I was not homesick for two continuous months. I understood the gibberish of the Aussies and only had a few language misunderstandings, which amused me rather than frustrated me. Returnees I had talked to before the beginning of my own exchange year had told me about a few difficulties they had faced, but in the end, they always emphasized that their time abroad had been fine and that they had made new friends for life. However, finding these new friends turned out to be a lot more difficult than expected. During my year down under, I learned that there is a big difference between finding acquaintances and making “really good” friends. “Meeting people” is round one and round one is easy – at least for exchange students. I thought of my German accent as being incredibly horrible, and I wanted to lose it as soon as possible, but it actually did make a few things easier at the beginning. As soon as I opened my mouth, which I had to do straight away during the first lesson, no one knew where I was from, but they could hear that I was not from Australia. At the end of this lesson, two girls came up to me to find out details about the origin of my way of speaking and I had similar experiences in my other classes. After three weeks, I knew half the school by first name. Instead of strengthening these friendships though, I became just too overwhelmed with the fact that every third student at a school of almost 800 students said “hi” to me. Round two was “socializing”. Although I never became homesick, I still felt strange after the first two months had passed. My host family was nice and I already felt at home. At school, I almost knew everyone, but I was in need of a closer friend, and confidant. All my contacts were extremely shallow. I talked to people from time to time, but only about such innovative topics as the weather. Well, awesome! I could not picture myself being friends with these students ten years down the road. I did not have a special strategy of socialization, but during recess and lunch I just set with people who were in my classes and who had made a nice impression on me, and I tried to participate in their conversations. That went quite well and in round three, “to be with a group”, I hung out with a group of four girls. Even though we did not have many similar interests, they were nice and keen to introduce me to their culture – well, at least three of them were. I had a sleepover with these three and we made Australian food and watched Australian movies. The fact that they often talked about things I had not known anything about and that they did not let me in on them, did not bother me much. I was firmly convinced that this would change in the near future, and that I soon would not just be the exchange student anymore, but I would be one of them. It did not turn out the way I expected it to be, however. Without being openly rejected, I was always the odd one out. I never became one of them. At the orientation meeting in Germany, my organization had prepared me for this, but after three months I thought that the phase “knowing people but no one really” should have been over. In the middle of my year abroad I realized that it was not as I had imagined. After the summer holidays, in which the girls and I did not do anything together, I finally admitted to myself that I would not belong to the group in the next five months either. Writing this article, I now have to laugh about myself because I needed almost six months to come to this conclusion, although things had actually been quite clear from very early on. Luckily enough, I did not get a “I want to go back to Germany”-crisis when I came to this realization, which proved once again that maybe things were not as bad as I had imagined them to be. After the summer holidays, I still stayed friends with this group of girls. I did not, however, meet them at lunch anymore, but I sat with fellow students who had already made a nice impression on me many weeks before. I especially got along very well and easily with a girl named Molly, who I had met at the beginning of my year in a class we had together. We have the same sense of humour and we share similar interests. I wonder why I had not noticed this during the first couple of months of my time in Australia. Because I was afraid of being the odd one out again, I was still a bit unsure if I should leave the other four girls behind and hang out with Molly and her friends instead. I decided to take the risk and soon realized that starting all over again was the best thing I could have done! It did not take long before I had finished round four: “belonging”. The reason for this might have been that I spoke English well enough by then, and therefore, it no longer took ages to express a thought. What tipped the scales, however, was that we were on the same wavelength. We had a lot in common: We liked the same music and books and thought about the same things. Since we had the same sense of humour, we soon came up with our own inside jokes. Together, we went out, went shopping, had lazy afternoons at someone’s place, took crazy pictures in the media lab at school, went kayaking and on school trips, and we talked about everything. Because of the extension of my visa, I was able to stay two months longer and to spend this time with really good friends, especially Molly. Sometimes I think I could have enjoyed my time even more if I had realized earlier who would and who would not turn out to be my best friends. After all of these ups and downs, I had reached my goal. I did find great friends and if I believe what people tell me back in Germany, I myself, have changed. I am not an entirely different person, but apparently, I approach people more openly, I am confident, and have got more enthusiasm for life. Although finding friends was hard, I did learn a lot along the way. Leaving my friends in Australia was difficult and I miss them heaps. However, I know now that the friends I finally did find down under are friends I will still be in contact with ten years ahead. All of the efforts and heartaches were worth it. If everything had been easy right from the start, there would have been many people I would not have met. Nothing was as I had thought it would be, but maybe that was good! Lisa Herden, 17 years old, lives in Hamm and is in 12th grade of a local Gymnasium. She is taking English and German as advanced courses, and she plans to spend some time in Scandinavia after passing the Abitur. itchy feet Nr.6, Ausgabe 2009 |
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