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Being able to come to the Excellence Center has been a truly eye-opening and incredible experience. Coming here as a 17-year-old knowing that all the other volunteers would be 18 or older, I was wondering if I would be the odd one out and left out of plans, 17 doesn’t sound too much smaller than 18, but trust me, it can be. Luckily, I was met with quite the opposite. Not a single volunteer here was anything short of amazing to me. Throughout my entire six weeks at the Excellence Center, I have been meeting dozens upon dozens of fascinating people who have explored and lived in all parts of the world doing all sorts of amazing things. They have all enjoyed spending time at the center sharing their fascinating stories with me and other volunteers, which I have found to be one of my favorite parts of the Excellence Center. Almost every night the volunteers would hang out at Docks, a spot right next to the Saale, and one night someone likened Docks to the place in every Sitcom where all the characters hang out every episode, and I thought that analogy was just perfect. After a long day of doing whatever all of us volunteers do in Germany, we can always count on being able to head over to Docks and find other volunteers to just relax with and talk to. To be honest, no matter where we are, whether we are at the Center or at Docks or in Berlin for the weekend, we always have new and interesting stories to tell about our culture and experiences in different countries, and with the amount of people that flow in and out of the Center at all times, there is always an abundance of conversation to be found here. Furthermore, with Fridays off, traveling around Germany and even Europe has been considerably more convenient and worth-while, and traveling on the weekends with other volunteers has been yet another way I have found meaning here at the Center. Even on the weekends I wasn’t planning on traveling outside of Halle with other volunteers, my amazing host family made sure I was never bored. We went to the lake together, the zoo, Leipzig, they made me dinner and made sure I was always well-fed and taken care of, they talked with me all the time and were just truly all-around amazing. I can easily say they also made my experience here at the Excellence Center one to remember forever.
I will say though, after spending six weeks here at the center, I have gotten close to a lot of people that I have had to say goodbye to after feeling like I had just started getting to know them, which has been hard. As much as I love being able to meet new people that come into the Center all the time, they all can’t stay here forever. But to be fair, I think that gives the Excellence Center a sort of charm, we all know that our time here is limited, and someone staying for barely even a week can relate to that feeling just as much as someone staying here for six or even eleven weeks can. We learn to appreciate the time we have here with the people we have here for a once in a life-time experience!