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by Thaddeus Stringer| Summer 2024 |<\/strong><\/p>\n Two years ago, I went to Leipzig for a semester and fell in love with the city. This summer, I returned as a part of the Honors Global Internship to teach English at the Forum Thomanum school. It was wonderful to return to the city where I had made so many lifelong memories, but I was surprised at how different my second experience turned out to be. When I arrived, it felt like I had never left. I spent several days returning to my favorite restaurants, wandering the city, and reliving moments from my semester.\u00a0<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n My carefree trip down memory lane was soon ended by work. I suddenly had responsibilities beyond just dragging myself to class at 10 am. I had to wake up early and be rested enough to interact with 7-year-old German kids who barely spoke any English. Having never worked with young children before, the first week was a major learning experience. I had to figure out how to manage a classroom, keep track of students on field trips, and simplify English concepts, all while dealing with a language barrier. More than a few times, my feeble attempts to explain things were met with confusion and sometimes laughter. At the end of the first week, I was convinced I had made a mistake while pursuing this internship.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I can\u2019t say when exactly my feelings started to change, but slowly, I began to love my daily mishaps and misunderstandings, even as the number of misunderstandings began to decrease. One experience in particular exemplifies the shift. One afternoon, I was asked to help with the storytelling club. A small number of kids were creating storybooks, so my job was to help one little girl transcribe her story into English. While my German skills had been improving, I was nowhere near good enough to understand the imagination of a little girl\u2019s fairytale. I got lost shortly after the main character took a trip through a portal and ended up in a magical world of flowers. I was learning to embrace the confusion, however, so with some help from a fellow novice German speaker and some imaginative illustrations, we managed to get the main character from the flower world back home. Not only did I gain a new bestie who said hello whenever she saw me, but I also solidified a valuable lesson: accept the mistakes and stick with them until you reach the end.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n By the end of the internship I had a new appreciation for the difficulties of language learning that I will apply both to my own studies and any future teaching efforts. I also had a refined desire for international experiences. Whereas my semester abroad left me with a desire to travel the world, the second experience left me with a desire to live life in community, wherever I live. The day-in-day-out experience of interacting with locals and working a job was incredibly fulfilling. While my desire to live and work abroad has been redoubled, I also believe that my perspective on work and life has drastically improved regardless of where I am located. <\/span><\/p>\n \n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.23.1″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.23.1″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_gallery gallery_ids=”72020,72172,72171,72170,72169″ show_title_and_caption=”off” _builder_version=”4.27.2″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_gallery][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Thaddeus Stringer | Summer 2024 | Two years ago, I went to Leipzig for a semester and fell in love with the city. This summer, I returned as a part of the Honors Global Internship to teach English at the Forum Thomanum school. It was wonderful to return to the city where I had made so many lifelong memories, but I was surprised at how different my second experience turned out to be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20655,"featured_media":72171,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/honors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/honors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/honors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/honors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20655"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/honors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72173"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/honors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72197,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/honors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72173\/revisions\/72197"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/honors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/honors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/honors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/honors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}