Growing up in a small, middle class town in the midwest left little cultural diversity surrounding me as a young child. Me and all of my friends seemed to be cut from the same material. For the most part, we all had two loving, caring parents, we often times did not struggle for items necessary to live, and we often times were never introduced to people much different than us. It can be quite easy to say the midwest is the worst place to raise an open minded child; that being said, I believe my first two hours in Germany opened my eyes more than anything else I have gone through in my entire life.
A jumbo jetliner went soaring through the sky, reaching upwards of 570 miles per hour. The Boeing 747 had endured a grueling nine hour flight over the Pacific Ocean. I was nine years old, excited, yet scared to see a new country. Germany had been a place that my father always talked about, he grew up there and left his mother and sister behind to live with his dad. This was the first time I would be meeting any of my family from Germany.
The flight attendant steered her cart down the aisles, collecting any trash before the end of the flight. As the attendant approached, I threw away my water cup before heading to the restroom one last time before the
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I learned how to be a great swimmer, I learned some phrases in German and Italian, and I also grew relationships with my long distance family members. It may not have seemed apparent to me the moment it happened, but my first two hours in a different country played the biggest affect on me as a person. A vacation that was intended to be fun for me ended up being so much more than that, this vacation opened my eyes to all of the other people, places, and things in this world. In two hours that could go by as the seemingly most unimportant time of the trip, I was able to mature and flourish more than I ever have in my