Connect

I’m from Germany. The city I grew up in is not very big and I lived in quite a small bubble, knowing nothing, being ungrateful and always with the inner feeling that I don’t belong. And I never really knew. So after I graduated school I ran away. I went to be an Au Pair in Texas.

For the first time, I really felt accepted, felt that I fitted in. I lived with strangers that soon became a family. We connected. It didn’t take long for me to realise how much I have been in a little bubble, not connecting to anything, before.

At the end of my stay in the US I decided that I was ready to travel by myself. And when I did, I connected. Both with strangers and with myself.

When I arrived in my hostel in Seattle, I just asked a man in the kitchen about something. We started talking, his name was Robert, he had just moved to Seattle and now worked in the hostel. He asked what I was doing, I told him my little story and we had a connection. A smile on your face makes things easier. And learning about him made my smile even bigger. I never saw him again.

That’s a thing I will miss about the US: you just start talking, people are interested in you. They ask how you are, where you’re from and what you do. It’s easy. You learn that you have things in common, or nothing at all and you connect. Sometimes it’s just a superficial connection, sometimes it brings a smile to your face and sometimes it becomes a strong bond that will change your life forever.

It is proven that humans need to connect, have a „need to belong“  and it automatically happens. Babies connect to anyone who shows them affection, no matter what they look like, what their job is etc. Children in general don’t care about looks, money and statuses. When we grow older we „learn“ only to trust and connect to people who look like we do. That is why we can watch nations starve to death and just live with it. They look different. We don’t do it on purpose though. It’s subconscious.

But it is time to unlearn this and connect again. To everyone. And I think one of the best ways to do that is to travel, to see the other cultures and to learn about them. Being an Au Pair you get to meet other Au Pairs from all over the world: Brasil, South Africa, Italy, Columbia, Australia, China, Thailand, you name it, they come from everywhere and they all have the same goal: to live in the US, or any other country, for at least a year and broaden their horizon.

On my journey along the west coast of the USA I met so many different people. In Seattle one of my roommates was also an Au Pair traveling around. We had a very nice time together and then separated when she went off to Vancouver and I went to Portland. I also met a French woman who was an artist and we talked about our background it art. I took a hiking tour in the Mt. Rainier National Park with a Japanese woman and a Chinese woman who lives in New York now. Asian cultures have always been so far away from me and it was really interesting how different they actually are from Europe and America.
In Portland I met people from the UK, Sweden, Switzerland, Germany, South Africa and the US. It is very diverse and it helps to understand other nations. We just talked about all kinds of things over breakfast.

In San Francisco I met people from Palestine, Pakistan and Russia. Together we went to a Drag Queen show, which, to be honest, was weird at first but then I really liked it. They were so passionate about what they were doing and that made it great.

The girl from Palestine in particular was very interesting to me. She grew up in Gaza, in the war, has been shot, her school was bombed but she is not afraid of guns. She grew up with them. She also was a very happy and open minded person which I guess surprised me the most because for me growing up in war is a horrible thought. But for her it’s normal.

After that I took a tour with 13 other Au Pairs. They have lived in the US just like I have but were from different countries like Austria, France, Germany, Slovakia and Norway. If you’re stuck together in a Van for 8 days you learn things about each other, their cultures and habits, their language and you connect. In our case we were amazed how fast we became friends and how strong our connection was. At the end of our trip we said over and over again that it felt like we had known each other forever. Some of us stayed in L.A. for a few more days together while others went back to work, home or continued traveling. Saying goodbye to them was hard because we had an amazing time and connected while camping under the stars!

By the time I got back to Germany I guess I met people from almost every continent and made new friends from everywhere.Connecting to so many people from other cultures also helped me to connect to the things I know. While telling other people about it, I learned a lot about my own culture and to appreciate what I have.

So, it’s time to connect, people! Next time you sit down next to someone on the bus, at least say „Hi“ and smile. It’s not that hard. And maybe that could make someones day. 😊

Someone who does good

In 1895 a man called Alfred Nobel wrote his will and left much of the wealth he had earned for the establishment of the Nobel Prize. He himself was a Swedish chemist, inventor, business man, author and engineer. And he wanted to leave something good behind, a positive legacy, and not just his deadly inventions like the dynamite and ballistics.

So he sat down, wrote what he wanted to leave for his relatives  and for the rest he had a different plan: the rest of his money should be used  for “the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind”. But this last will caused controversy and it took years until the first Nobel Prize was awarded in 1901.

Since then, every year people with outstanding accomplishments in different areas would receive an award.

We are here to introduce some of them to you. We want to show you the people who did good received a Nobel Prize and why they received it.

I want to start with someone you probably know and who, in my opinion, really does deserve the Noble Peace Price: Barack Obama.

Here are some quick facts:

• Born: 4 August 1961, Honolulu, HI, USA
• 44th President of the United States of America
• Family: Wife Michelle Obama, daughters Malia and Sasha

 

Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. His mother is from Kansas and his father from Kenya. He grew up in a family of hard working people. His mother was an anthropologist focusing on women’s work in Indonesia and poverty in rural areas.

He was raised partly by his grandparents who valued traits like honesty, kindness, courtesy and helping each other out. “True things, things that last”, like he said in his speech at the DNC end of July. His grandfather had served in the Army, and his grandmother worked hard to get up from being a secretary to the vice president of a local bank. Things didn’t come easy for him. He worked his way from Occidental College Los Angeles, over Columbia University in New York all the way through Harvard Law School financed by student loans and scholarships.

When he moved to Chicago, he helped the communities that were devastated by the closure of steel plants on the south side of the city.

When he was working in the Illinois State Senate he passed the first major ethics reform in 25 years, which cut taxes for working families and increased health care for families.

In 2009 he was awarded with the Nobel Peace Price for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples“ after being President for less than 8 months. He promoted the  nuclear nonproliferation and a “new climate” in international relations, especially in reaching out to the Muslim world. He set up a Treaty called New Start, that measures for the reduction of Strategic Offensive Arms between the United States and the Russian Federation.

The White House is illuminated in celebration after the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution guarantees a right to same-sex marriage, on Friday, June 26, 2015, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

He is speaking out about human rights and democracy. He made gay marriage legal and even called himself a feministist recently. In a lot of his speeches you hear him talk about his daughters. He wants them, and every other woman, to have the same opportunities and rights as every man in the US. The first bill he signed as the President of the United States was the Lilly Ledbetter Bill, which allows women who are paid less than their male coworkers to sue their employers even years after they find out. He supports equality and believes that we are stronger together than on our own and that we need to do things now. It’s our responsibility.

“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.“ – Barack Obama

He cares about the middle class workers and says that they make the nation. He convinced Apple and a major Chinese company to build factories in the US instead of Asia. He created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to protect consumers from bad credit and loan deals, made sure no American has to starve by increasing the funds for food stamps by 20 billion $, provided affordable childcare for working families, cut taxes for the lower 95% of Americans to the lowest levels since the 1950’s, modernized labor standards and much more. With all of this he proved that helping the working class does not hurt the economy. Signing the Affordable Healthcare Act in 2010, he provided more than 20 million people with health care and started fixing the very broken health care system in the US.

Also, Obama invested heavily in the education system. He came up with the Race to the Top Reform, which encourages every state to come up with the most effective school reforms and coordinated the states in their curriculums to better prepare students for college and the 21st centuries global economy. He funded the construction of new schools all over the country and helped people access early education programs and college education.

He increased the funds for several institutions to support veterans, made college education easily accessible, cut their homeless rates almost in half and made health care faster for them. He ended the war in Iraq and ordered all US military forces out of the country.

In his presidency he faced the worst economical crisis in 80 years. When he was asked wether to give the automobile industry support or not, he thought about the millions of people who would lose their jobs and less about the politics. He weighs the politics like every politician should but he cares more about the people and was willing to lose for doing the right thing. He supported General Motors with funds and saved millions of jobs and secured lives. Under his Presidency the unemployment rates reached their lowest even though there was a crisis.

He is described as the calm presence in a troubled room. When facing the impossible he keeps calm, analyses the issue and makes his decision. Of course he couldn’t keep all the promises he made in 2008 and he made decisions that made finance experts faint but he did so much, not just for the US but for the whole world. Our earth with all the people on it. He pushed federal agencies to be green leaders and make plans to lessen their environmental impacts and expanded water and wilderness protection. He also closed the dirtiest power plants in the US to reduce pollution and safe our lives and the environment.

After all my research, reading what President Obama has accomplished  and watching his speeches, I can say, he was a great president and will go down in history for more than just being the first black President. A smart man with a big heart, who really cares about being equal, treating people right and willing to lose his place in the White House and not being re-elected for doing the right thing for the people in his country. He pushes his people forward with positivity and believes in hope and the strength America has as a nation.

Just watch his speech at the Democratic National Convention and you see his positivity and pride of his people. He definitely deserved the Nobel Peace Prize.