Sarah – Germany

I am very excited to travel to Berlin, Germany as it will be my first time out of the country. This also makes me a bit nervous because although I’ve flown many times domestically, I’ve never flown internationally, so I will be starting this trip with a brand new experience.

I wanted to talk a little about myself. I am disabled. I have Rheumatoid Arthritis, which is thankfully in remission, meaning my immune system is no longer causing damage to my joints though I have already sustained joint damage from when it was uncontrolled. I have ADHD, and I’m on the Autism Spectrum with low support needs. I also recently received a new chronic illness diagnosis this past semester, Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension, or IIH, which means my brain has too much cerebrospinal fluid in it and they don’t know why.

When I started looking at this program, I was worried that I would be unable to attend it due to my disabilities. I was reassured by my faculty leader that ECU has accommodated many students with disabilities in the past but I’m still nervous about the trip. I decided to include my disabilities in my blogs so that others like me can see my Study Abroad journey.

As a history major, the majority of my personal research about Germany has been from around the 1800s-1950s, so I fear most of my knowledge about Germany will be unhelpful in modern Germany. I have learned a bit about the country in my German 1001 class during the Spring 2025 semester and I bought Rick Steves’ Berlin guidebook as well as his German phrase and dictionary book so hopefully all three will serve me well.

I am taking two German language courses from Inlingua Berlin, which will transfer over to ECU when I return to the US. I am also taking GLST 2600: The Holocaust with Dr. Jones in Berlin. As a history major, I am very interested to learn about the Holocaust in Germany, as this is an opportunity that rarely comes up.