Having other Americans in my program made the first few weeks easier for me. They were missing a lot of the same food and American norms as I was. However, as the semester progressed, I realized that while we shared some things in common, there were cross cultural experiences among our American group of exchange students as well. I noticed that I found myself most comfortable with the other Americans from New England and New York. Most of the other American exchange students came from North Carolina. While some of them were like me in many ways, I was also surprised how different many of them were. Religion, food, and way of life in the south can be very different from what I’m used to having lived in Massachusetts my whole life. This gave me a new perspective on how people see Americans. While we all come from the same country, we can also be vastly different. My friends who grew up in New York City were vastly different from my friend who grew up in San Diego. This made me realize that I cannot make generalizations about the exchange students from other countries. While I may suspect that all German people enjoy bread rolls every morning, I cannot know that based just on my experiences with my German neighbors. Regional cultures within countries can make a huge difference in norms and cross cultural experiences. It was also really cool to meet so many Canadian students while abroad. Before studying in Mannheim, I had never really interacted much with Canadians. It was really funny to travel with them because when asked if they were American, they would quickly correct the person and proudly say Canadian. We would then usually look at each other and say, “so what is the difference anyways?” We realized that for the most part, Canadians are very similar to Americans. The only differences we noticed were some vocabulary differences and phrases. I’m glad now that I live so close to Canada and will be able to reunite with these friends much more easily than my European exchange student friends.
