Islam - Effects on Germany (2015)

I spent a semester at Virginia Tech as an exchange student from France. I opted to live alone off campus and was allowed to choose the same classes as regular students. I struggled a bit with a few things, finding a place to live from across an ocean wasn't particularly easy in 2004, but I got so much more out of this experience than if I had sticked with the French or even European students I met during the mandatory orientation gatherings.

I was emailed by the staff responsible for foreign students after a few months, they were slightly worried because they hadn't heard from me once after the first few days and wanted to make sure that everything was alright. I was living some of the best months of my life in my huge empty apartment, sleeping on an air mattress and living among typical Americans as if I was one of their own.

I was one of a handful of members in the association that welcomed and accompanied exchange students at my school and even worked for the department of international relations for a few hours a week, I already knew what it was like to be part of a group of people coming from all over the world, which is a fantastic experience too, but I wanted none of that in Virginia.

Of course I was a Westerner in a Western country, the cultural shifts we experienced aren't remotely comparable, I meditate and have been dabbling in Buddhism enough to know how utterly different the minds of the average Westerner and of a practicing Buddhist are. We preach the same message though. Don't stay with your own kind, mingle with the locals or you might as well save on the plane tickets and look at the place from Google Street View.

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