Smoot(h) Sail­ing and Study­ing Abroad

The sun had only been up a few hours as Kestrel Smoot, oc­cu­pa­tional ther­apy ma­jor, stood sur­rounded by her friends. Even though she had only known them for four months, they had grown close from their ex­pe­ri­ence to­gether and this was how it all would end. “It was so sad. We just had this great mo­ment to­gether and every­one was su­per happy and su­per joy­ful,” Smoot said.

It was De­cem­ber, the tem­per­a­ture was 32 de­grees, and some were con­tem­plat­ing whether this was a good idea. They had cho­sen a spot in the shade where a thin layer of ice could be seen creep­ing its way to­wards the mid­dle of the lake. It was the same lake they had gone for a swim in dur­ing the sum­mer. A lo­cal women stopped to watch the “crazy Amer­i­cans.” No mat­ter the spec­ta­tors, a pact had been made, but Smoot was­n’t too wor­ried. She was just there to be a body warmer. Her com­pan­ions quickly changed their clothes and jumped in.

Their shrieks could be heard clear across the lake and drew more peo­ple to watch the col­lege stu­dents as they came back out to dry off and take a pic­ture on their last day to­gether. “None of us wanted to say good-bye. We kept drag­ging the day out longer,” Smoot said.

Her in­ter­est in study­ing abroad was sparked dur­ing a tour of Maryville’s cam­pus dur­ing her sopho­more year of high school as the guide ex­plained where she could go to get more in­for­ma­tion. Fate had it that it arose again dur­ing her fresh­man ori­en­ta­tion at Maryville when she at­tended Dr. Har­f’s talk on study­ing abroad. “I was like ‘Dad, I want to go,’” Smoot said.

She met again with Dr. Harf to pick out a des­ti­na­tion and she de­cided on Berlin, Ger­many. She wanted some­where that she could take all of her re­quired gen­eral classes and pos­si­bly meet up with some friends and fam­ily mem­bers. Al­though con­flict­ing sched­ules and lan­guage bar­ri­ers pre­vented her from meet­ing up with any­one she knew, she was­n’t alone. “It gave me an op­por­tu­nity to meet a lot of new friends,” Smoot said.

To pre­pare, she shopped, packed and learned how air­ports worked. “It was a lit­tle nerve-wrack­ing be­cause this was my first big trip and I had never been on a plane be­fore. When I got on the plane, I was just su­per ner­vous be­cause of course every­one was like ‘Plane rides are su­per scary.’ Once we got in the air, I was like, ‘This is cool, this is hap­pen­ing,’” Smoot said, but it did­n’t re­ally hit her un­til she flew over the Big Ben. “Wow, I’m ob­vi­ously not in Amer­ica any­more,” Smoot said.

Af­ter the un­of­fi­cial Po­lar Plunge, they boarded the train to a restau­rant called ‘Time for Bread’ (trans­lated) to eat choco­late-cov­ered cin­na­mon rolls. “That’s when it re­ally hit me. This is go­ing to be the last time I am go­ing to say good­bye. Who knows if I’m go­ing to see them again. There’s was that real mo­ment of not know­ing what’s go­ing to hap­pen,” Smoot said. At the end of the meal, they boarded the train that would drop each of them off, one or two at a time, un­til Smoot was the only one left.

Pub­lic trans­porta­tion had­n’t al­ways been so easy to nav­i­gate. Smoot was used to her life as a small-town girl from Ster­ling, Illi­nois, and got lost on her first day. “Go­ing from a small town to a huge town was a big thing. I learned how to speak Ger­man re­ally fast,” Smoot said. Be­fore com­ing here, she had only known the ba­sics of the lo­cal lan­guage from old text­books that her neigh­bor helped teach her with.

Lan­guage was not the only chal­lenge Smoot faced on her trip. All of the Amer­i­can stu­dents at­tended a class that helped them learn cul­tural dif­fer­ences, such as cross­ing your uten­sils to sig­nal a bad meal or plac­ing them par­al­lel to com­pli­ment it and that you must sig­nal wait­ers in restau­rants to come to you. She also learned a few tricks on her own like how ask­ing cer­tain ques­tions will get you a bet­ter dis­count.

Smoot ex­pe­ri­enced cul­ture shock in the city. “Any­where I went, it seemed any­thing I per­ceived was the com­plete op­po­site,” She re­called how on her first day she was sur­prised at all of the open bot­tles every­where be­cause they have open carry and how she at first de­scribed cer­tain ar­eas as ‘sketchy’ un­til she found out that artists had come pur­pose­fully to graf­fiti the walls and make it more artsy.

Her host fam­ily kept en­cour­ag­ing her to go out, telling her that there was more to ex­pe­ri­ence. Af­ter two weeks she went out and dis­cov­ered, “They were right!” Smoot said. When she was­n’t study­ing, she was out ex­plor­ing. “I be­come more in­de­pen­dent,” Smoot said. If you asked her for ad­vice about trav­el­ling she would say, “It’s okay to go do things by your­self and not rely on peo­ple to go with you and do things with. If you don’t just try to go out and do things by your­self or go out by your­self, then you’re go­ing to be stuck in one place and not ex­pe­ri­ence things that you may not have seen be­fore. That was a big thing for me,” Smoot said.

Some of the mem­o­rable mo­ments for her were the con­cen­tra­tion camp she vis­ited for a school trip, Re­ich­stag, and some of the tele­phone booths that had a dou­ble use.“Who knew a tele­phone booth could also be a disco booth?” Smoot said.“There was al­ways some­thing to do.” Nürn­berg, Weima and Dres­den were just a few of the places she vis­ited.

Still in de­nial about her trip com­ing to an end, she looked out the win­dow and watched as she passed by now fa­mil­iar places she had been, re­flect­ing on it all. “My fa­vorite thing, I want to say every­thing, but re­al­is­ti­cally my fa­vorite thing about Berlin was just how un­ex­pect­edly I fell in love with it,”

Through the win­dow she could see Alexan­der­platz where the T.V. tower is, stadt­mitte where the konz­erthaus and the Christ­mas mar­ket, Gen­dar­men­markt took place in win­ter and many other places she had vis­ited. “It was a good re­flect­ing time though too, to see, look at all the stuff I was able to do… Hav­ing an overview of the train, I was able to look and see how much of the city I had grown to know, and how small it seemed now,” Smoot said.

Smoot still keeps in touch with the friends she made in Ger­many and they hope to re­turn to Ger­many one day. She would like to keep up with her Ger­man and visit the parts of Ger­many she missed out on. “There’s so much to do. I feel like I did noth­ing,”

“It’s good to do re­search, but don’t be afraid to be spon­ta­neous,” Smoot said.

All pho­tos cour­tesy of Kestrel Smoot.