We had kept in touch a bit over the time we were apart before then; but when I let her know that I was only a train ride away, she jumped on a train and came and visited me! I can still remember meeting her at the Gare de Lyon. I was standing on my tiptoes trying to find a blond girl with glasses when suddenly she appeared right in front of me! We hugged and it was like no time had passed at all. That year we visited each other often, and I had the chance to meet her family.
When I met them for the first time I was struck by the absurd fact that I didn't know any German other than "hallo" (hello), "danke" (thank you), and "Kuchen" (cake). There I was sitting on a train going to meet people whose language I could not speak! So it was then and there that I decided I had to learn German. Not only did I want to understand what was going on around me when I visited her family, but also it felt like a disservice to be unable to communicate with her family without expecting them to switch to English. Thus, when I went back to college for my senior year, I took a German class and focused my French thesis on French-German relations! German is a more challenging language than French for me. But whenever I would be rewriting my notes and color coding the many new words, I would think about how this would get me one step closer to talking to Clara's family! Everything I was doing was done with the aim of getting closer to Germany, to keep building my relationship with Clara. Last year I taught English in France and was once again only a train ride away from Clara and her family. That same year I applied for a Fulbright grant to study the topic of the French-German border, this time from the German side.
