Hello friends!

My name is Isabella Hribal and I am participating in University of Pittsburgh’s German Culture and Language study abroad program in Munchen, Germany. I just finished out my sophomore year at University of Pittsburgh-Greensburg, dual majoring in Early and Special Education with a certificate in West European Studies. I had a great opportunity to visit Germany two times before this, neither which was with academic purposes, although I still learned a lot while I was here before nonetheless. This time though, I have the pleasantry of staying for a total of six weeks in the beautiful city of Munchen!

I chose to come to Germany because I dream of moving to the Germanic Region one day and becoming an educator. To be honest, I don’t know if I want to live in Germany, Austria, or the German part of switzerland, all I know for sure is I love the language and for some odd reason, it clicks.

My end goal is to become a kindergarten teacher in one of the aforementioned places, but first I believe that I would like to teach English. I hope that after graduation I can complete the Fullbright Teacher Apprentenceship and get a good foot in the door for my future journey!

After this program, I hope that I will have a better understanding of Germany’s culture, and whether or not I would like to live in such a grand place. As an outsider looking in, it is always easier to see what makes a place beautiful and give it a strong pull factor, but it is a different story to finding out the actuality of life in Germany. While six years can not truly compare to living a lifetime in any place no matter where, I do believe that this will be a great start into furthering my future career plans and figuring out if this is the life that I want to live.

Follow along to get an insider’s scoop into real life in Germany!