A Quote by Alice Merton
When I was thirteen years old, and we had just moved to Germany, I definitely felt I was missing out on normal teenage life. I was watching my old school friends from Canada grow up without me while I was in Germany trying to learn the language and trying to pass each year without failing.
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Boredom!!! Shooting!!! Shelling!!! People being killed!!! Despair!!! Hunger!!! Misery!!! Fear!!! That's my life! The life of an innocent eleven-year-old schoolgirl!! A schoolgirl without a school, without the fun and excitement of school. A child without games, without friends, without the sun, without birds, without nature, without fruit, without chocolate or sweets, with just a little powdered milk. In short, a child without a childhood.
I feel German, that's for sure. I grew up in Germany, I went to school in Germany and most of my friends are there. I play for Germany.
You could grow up in Germany in the postwar years without ever meeting a Jewish person. There were small communities in Frankfurt or Berlin, but in a provincial town in south Germany, Jewish people didn't exist.
I accepted Christ at a young age, at the age of six years old, and just tried to play hockey and balance that. I had some struggles later in my teenage years. I moved away from home and struggled a little bit being on my home and finding out who I was and trying to mix that with my faith and make it real.
When I was a kid, three years old, I couldn't walk by the piano without reaching up and trying to play a few notes on it. There are kids who are just drawn to listening to music and dancing to it and trying to conduct.
In East Germany it was very normal for a woman to go out and work even if she had children. A few weeks after giving birth women would return to their normal working life. We never had housewives in East Germany.
When I turned 11, we had to leave East Germany overnight because of the political orientation of my father. Now I was going to school in West Germany, which was American-occupied at that time. There in school, all children were required to learn English and not Russian. To learn Russian had been difficult, but English was impossible for me.
I can say to the German people that the United States has been good for Germany. Has looked out for Germany. Has provided security for Germany. Has helped rebuilt Germany. And unify Germany.
The competitive nature definitely sticks out in my mind. Everybody out there is trying to win. Each individual is trying to put up more points. Each individual is trying to put each other on while playing in a team atmosphere.
For my Oxford degree, I had to translate French and German philosophy (as it turned out, Descartes and Kant) at sight without a dictionary. That meant Germany for my first summer vacation, to learn the thorny language on my own.
I'm third generation. I was born in Germany, grew up in Germany, and many of my friends are German. I love playing for Germany. I'm proud I can play for the national team.
I moved to San Francisco when I was 20 years old. I couldn't even drink yet. My friends in college thought I was so stupid for missing out on the four best years of my life. But I was so ready to start living my own life and absorb Silicon Valley culture.
I'll say - I have four kids! I married a woman when I was 24 years old. She was 13 years my senior. She had been married twice before. I adopted them. I was 24 and had a 17-year-old son instantly, an 11-year-old daughter, a 5-year-old, and a child on the way. So I had to learn how to become a parent very quickly.
I grew up in Germany for a little while, and all my German friends said that Seattle, weather and energy-wise, is a lot like West Germany. It's true.
When I was 11 years old, my family had to leave East Germany and begin a new life in West Germany overnight. Until my father could get back into his original profession as a government employee, my parents operated a small laundry business in our little town. I became the laundry delivery boy.
Each part of life has its own pleasures. Each has its own abundant harvest, to be garnered in season. We may grow old in body, but we need never grow old in mind and spirit. No one is as old as to think he or she cannot live one more year.
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