By Mona
“[…] and we will come back home, and we will come back home, home again […]”
These are some lyrics from “From now on”, a song out of the movie “The Greatest Showman”. During our journey we often listen to this song in the galley and now it is reality. We will come back home, in less than one week.
Since the first day it was sure that we return and our journey will have an end. Three months ago we all thought that our parents will be at the pier waiting for us and that we will go back in our normal life, the life we had before. I imagined that I will have a few free days and after that I will have school in a normal classroom with tables and chairs.
But now it is different. In the last days and weeks everything was uncertain and we didn’t know, if we are even allowed to berth in Kiel. We talked about a lot of different ways of heading home, like coming home by bus or staying at the Thor for some more days.
In the movie “The Greatest Showman” also happens something unknown and it changes the whole story. The characters are frightened and don’t know what will happen and if they can have their normal life back and if their dream can come true.
Our situation is similar. Today I’m living my biggest dream, but it is completely different to how I thought it would be. When I look back to the last six months I can’t imagine, that it is true that I sailed with 33 other students around the world, that I have seen in that little time so many countries, different ways of living and a lot of friendly people.
Before our journey it was clear, that it wouldn’t be easy to come back and to live a life of a 16-year-old girl. And now it is even more complicated, because I can not imagine how life is in Germany, how my all-day routine will be.
Another point is, I lived over six months with 50 people on board and every minute anyone of us was awake and we shared everything with each other and sometimes we lived closer than a family.
We are all different and at first it wasn’t easy to know how the others do something and we are all strong characters and very different kind of persons, like the figures in the movie. They are like black and white, and so we are, too. But in the end nearly every movie has a good ending, especially “The Greatest Showman” and so we have.
We had a beautiful, emotional and extraordinary journey full of impressions. We shared six months of our life together and sometimes it was hard and we had different opinions and there was not always harmony, but in the end, we have something big and these are six fascinating months, which will be stuck in my head forever. We made something you can’t describe, what you have to feel with your heart and you have to be part of to understand.
On April the 25th we have to leave our new home, the Thor, and we have to deal with the situations at our old home. As we have managed a lot of complicated situations during our journey, we will be able to manage everything what will come in Germany as well. And at home we have our families back, we have our friends and we have us!
It is heading home, but it is not the end of our trip. It is just the beginning of something new!