Redefining Community by Raymond Vickers

My cultural environment is what one would expect one in an urban area of Germany to be like. Different food, different people, even different weather (although at times it seems hotter than back home). Sometimes it’s so different I feel like I’m a kid again, because I can’t speak the language or cultural instincts yet. But the community I joined is not Germans, pros at their language, but foreigners in Germany experiencing a new environment. I can relate to everyone in my program here, because of that shared trait. I have yet to start classes, but I have experienced “trying” to speak the language with my classmates as we awkwardly try to ask for the check. It’s been like really bad acting, and the locals know I’m a foreigner (from my horrendous pronunciations of words). I feel like that shared awkwardness is what asserts this community I’m in; of students, not just from FSU, trying to learn how to “Germany.” My experience has taught me to have patience so far. I don’t feel like I’m in a new community so far, but I feel like I’ve definitely joined one. If a community is like a school where someone joins or goes to to learn, then I feel like that’s what I’ve done with this community. Being in the wild in this country has made me definitely shy, and hurt my ego a little bit (because I’m scared of failing speaking German), but I’ve come to understand that this process will have failure. Maybe it’s mixed with culture shock because I have yet to be here for a whole week. Today even I went to get a Döner and was stressing so much to try to communicate… In not just German but also English. Other people in my community have felt the same too. I’m glad that I’ve met people with similar interests and similar awkwarndness when it comes to being in a new country. I got lucky with my roommate as we are very similar, and I feel like we’re helping each other with our speaking as we go along. It’s an interesting concept to describe an environment without describing a community. As I look through this city of Dresden, I cannot not imagine it without the people and eras that defined its creation, destruction, and existence. I see buildings, such as churches, that have stood for centuries (and, for historical context, destroyed and rebuilt). Like how I can’t imagine this beautiful city without the people in it, I can’t imagine my experience without the community I have been brought into. This program, the people I encounter, and the challenges I find, all attribute to a better understanding of this world I live in and what really makes it. If I came here by myself, in search of becoming better at learning languages or culture, I feel I would not have this experience I am just now rolling into. Without community, a place cannot exist, this planet cannot exist… experience cannot exist.