A step out of the border

What’s up? I am Manoel a computer science student from Universidade Federal de Campina Grande in Brazil. I have heard about this exchange and applied for it but, honestly, I did not have much hope that something this exciting would happen, but to my surprise here am I in Remagen, Germany studying at RheinAhrCampus, working close at Sprachen/Internationales. It has been an amazing time and I could never imagine that I would ever be able to face so many new things in my life in such a short time. I got so many friends from around the world, immersed in a completely different culture and faced new everyday challenges. I have got a lot of first times in that period such as going to another country, first time flying on plane, first time speaking English as main language, first time in a really cold weather, first friends from Georgia, Albania, Azerbaijan, Canada, Netherland, South Korea, Germany, Australia and Jordan, and many more. This semester started with a group activity, on the shore of the Rheine River where we were together to clean up the river. It was a really exciting moment because we got to know each other and after that activity, we went hiking in the direction of Drachenfels, a very old castle ruins. It was such an amazing day and a good start in Germany. However, there were a lot of challenges that made life more exciting but that gave me the chance to learn something new every time, for instance, the language barrier was pushing me back until now, I could not imagine what it would be like to live in a place where the main language is German and even though people speak English it still would be hard to break into the culture completely. For that reason learning the language is a good strategy to get integrated. Also, the professional background built during that time is a big accomplishment to understand and learn how to deal with different cultures, how to create and run a business, the importance of smart goals. All of those are definitely a great addition to my future career. To conclude, five months so far has given me another point of view of my life and has brought things that I have never expected as well. Being exposed to new perspectives made me realize that the world has many faces and it is our role to identify it. And the only way for that is to get out of our comfort zone and step out of our borders.