Week 1 started off badly, with us stranded on our first night in Berlin with nowhere to stay. We sorted out the misunderstanding, but Berlin and I got off on the wrong foot. Rather than try to conceal my culture shock, loneliness, and fear behind a veil of “cool”, I decided to make video blogs to give me a free place to wallow and expose how vulnerable I felt. This actually was very therapeutic, because it enabled me to feel safe in exploring the city, knowing that if the experience was less than positive I could always laugh about it later in my own “comedy of misery” style. I think that if I had not given voice to these feelings of disorientation I would have ended up paralyzed by fear. I think I took for granted how hard it was going to be to be a 45 year old woman with multiple disabilities to be separated from her husband and family for 12 weeks.
