Remember there is an ordinary tourist saying, “I have found myself in Asia”? Now read how I have found myself here in Bavaria.

Since I started my study and made friends here, my attitude toward social media has changed dramatically and radically. Though, I am not a completely silent person now on social media, but I know where my limit is. If I compare my platform to those of friends in Germany, I would be the one who constantly annoys people with random posts but if being compared to most of my friends in Cambodia, I would be that kind of silent little creature friend. It amazes me how much I have learned tremendously especially, unconsciously from my own surroundings because I was actually quite active on social media back then.

In my hometown, you would likely be seeing people constantly looking at their smartphones or taking selfies or posting pictures to social media platforms during socializing and it is normal for them as everyone is doing the same thing. Here, to a certain extent, it would be considered impolite in doing so and personally, I find this kind of behavior a bit impolite, disrespectful, and disturbing towards other people.

My whole perspective on life has been changed 180 degrees. My outlook on life is not at all the same as before when I came here. I used to put massive pressure on myself as well as somehow tried to change the kind of person I was in order to fit in the society. I was an extreme ambitious person especially when it comes to any kind of achievements in life. Too extreme to the point that I studied and worked 7 days a week during the semester period (I was already a university student before coming here). Not having a break during the day didn’t really bother me, I was some sort of a workaholic and I enjoyed it every time I ticked off a to-do list.

Nowadays, I always try to balance my working and leisure time the best I could, although people around me keep telling me that I am still working too much and that I should have even more free time. This is just one adjustment view out of hundreds. I could write for more than 20 pages on this point, but no worries! I won’t.

Above all, I am starting to see life more as a theatre play, a certain piece of act. Each person gets to write their own play and conduct them however he/she wanted to. In other words, life is just a play in which we should get our amusement from. We should not take life, or any kind of failure that occurred too serious. We are just one small particle in the universe (I might have read too many philosophical books). All I can say is that we should try to live in the moment because nothing lasts.

See you later alligators and stay tuned for the last part! *wink 

Demati Chay is an International Management and Tourismusmanagement student who understands Bavarian dialect more than most Germans do. The only Khmer student at the THD is a festival junkie, a language freak, a fusion-foodie, a snow lover, an urban gardener, and a beer sommelier-wannabe.