Personal Development
Leaving your hometown sounds fun in the beginning, but when you realize that it includes daily shopping, taking care of your own laundry and managing your budget, it is getting more and more difficult. Our participants from Aschaffenburg prepared an overview of the challenges they faced in the last 4 weeks.
Before the flight, we were a bit scared about what would happen to us in the next four weeks while we were so far away from our families (we haven’t been away from our families for so long since then). When we arrived, we were positively excited about Tenerife. In the beginning, we were a bit overwhelmed, but after a few days, we managed our “lives” here in Puerto de la Cruz quite well as we got used to the routine. Our money and time presented the biggest problems.
About dealing with our money…
Dealing with our money was especially a challenge. It was difficult to decide what we really needed to survive and how to split up the money. We know how important it is to think about the expenses and not buy everything we liked. We learned to resign ourselves to only what we needed. Through our experiences, we have begun to realize that going out and eating at a restaurant is much more expensive than cooking at home, so every day we found ourselves having to make a decision about whether to buy our food cheap in the supermarket or go to a restaurant.
Also, going to the supermarket was not as easy as we first thought it would be as we realized that we first needed to think of what we needed and resist things in the supermarket that were not absolutely necessary. So we learned: Writing a shopping list is recommendable! We didn’t find all the groceries which are available in Germany, so we couldn’t cook all the meals we wanted to.
We also had the opportunity to take part in organized activities. Our school offered a wide range of free time activities, such as paragliding, whale watching, and excursions to the other islands. Here we had to think of our money again. What do I want to do that can fit into my budget as well?
About dealing with our time…
Last but not least, the most important point that we want to make is that you have to organize yourself and your daily routine. Nobody tells you what you should do when you’re there, so you have to be careful not to miss any meetings or arrangements. On the one hand, you will learn that other people will depend on you and, in return, you will learn to trust them as well. We stuck to that and everything worked well. We didn’t expect that type of organization from ourselves and we were positively surprised.
Let’s summarize: It’s very important to experience this on your own as it will help to prepare you for your future lives. Would you be so brave as to try the same adventure?
by Vanessa, Tobias, and Francisca.
