"They're other passengers, and your blocking the terminal." I don't know if I had spoke out loud or not, but I was lucky to be traveling along with another girl, who had simply sensed my air of bewilderment. I moved myself away and swallowed hard, as though taking in all these new sights with one mighty gulp. It was everywhere: Laughing, fashionable black clothing, hands flinging in descriptive conversations, and smoking? Indoors? Somebody better tell them to put that out or security will be on their way... Wait! There were dozens of them. They were allowed smoke indoors! Amazing...
We made our way to a cluster of empty chairs, where we'd wait out a six-hour layover, feeling like hermit crabs as we pulled our habitats of luggage through a current of rushing Europeans. I felt empty. I'd already forgotten everything that existed in that world I had come from, but it wouldn't matter here, anyway. This was new ground, with new terms, customs, rules, languages, paces, and obviously a brilliant sense of fashion. I cursed myself with my combination of a navy blazer and a tan brown, cowboy style travel hat. Finally I gathered myself together (or scraped myself from the floor), just in time for us to catch our plane to Zürich, Switzerland: the country in which I'd be residing for the next 11 months. Will I like it there? Will they like me? Will I be required, at any time in the year, to wear lederhosen? These questions and others bombarded me like preteens to a Backstreet Boy concert. Mid flight I was reminded by my companion what I had totally neglected, I spoke not a single word of German. "Actually it'll be even more difficult for us because they speak Swiss-German there. It's a dialect, but truthfully sounds completely different than normal German. Do you know all your conjugations?"
"Who, me? Oh, hehe, not quite. I feel submersion is the best technique for such an immense learning process." I am such a bull-shitter; 6 months spent watching summer flicks, making shopping trips to the city, and saying goodbye to friends until they were sick of me. Oh why am I such a slacker?!
We arrived in Zürich exactly on time, despite my subliminal messages to the captain to make a loop or two around the airport, at least allowing me to get a few more words under the belt. Great, I can say, fast, slow, health, tired, and shit. (Sorry, we had a German exchange student the year before, and had I known I'd be sent here, I would have asked for more profound translations.) We grabbed our bags, exited the connecting tunnel, expecting to see braids and smiles of awaiting host families. Maybe they'll have big American flags, or chocolate and watches and big slabs of cheese!
We entered into the light to find...not one person. It took asking a few people before we realized non-travelers weren't allowed into the terminals.
So we endured another vigorous route of mazes, gates, customs, and lines, until finally we entered the large luggage pickup level. Past the rotating belts, there was a floor-length window with a hundred round Swiss faces pressed eagerly against it. So this was the designated waiter's pen. It only took me a minute before I picked out those three distinctive faces that I had seen in photos received only weeks before. They had a balloon with my name sketched on it and what I suppose was an interpretation of my face. I gathered my unnecessarily heavy luggage, and said a quick goodbye to the other student. I finally met my family members who had been waiting in anticipation: Ursi, my host mama, Lena, my sweet host sissy, and Mateo, my host brother, only he was to take his own exchange journey to Carson City, Nevada, two weeks later.
Well, I feel a bit ashamed for my silly thoughts of fear, especially about the lederhosen. My life since that day has been nothing but blissful, with experience after experience tucking itself into another little corner of my memories.
I only wrote this semi-long, descriptive anecdote to describe how a typical (or perhaps, just me) student might perceive their upcoming exchange, or embarking into the great unknown. All I can say now is that these preconceived notions are nothing in comparison to the real experience. I've traveled, I've explored, I've asked questions until reaching an unbearable level, I've been proven right, wrong (and they won't let me forget), and I've learned valuable lessons throughout everything. Lessons I'd never learn if I had stayed or study similar subjects, especially language. I've also changed my mind about my own country a million and a half times, and I've only been here 5 months so far. Well, I've gone on quite long enough, at least for covering day one. Then there was the time I ended up walking 5 miles through rain, mud, and cow paddies in the middle of the night. But that's a whole different story, to be told when your eyes are readjusted...