Lost in Germany

I moved to Germany about four years ago, not because I wanted to, but because my parents wanted to relocate. It was actually supposed to be a holiday trip for three weeks, which apparently ended up being permanent. I love Germany. It's a beautiful country and there are many festivals and activities going on somewhere. The country does have some strict laws which I've become quite accustomed to. Due to the fact that our supposed "holiday" turned into a permanent stay, I had to change schools naturally. In Germany, there is a law that says all children MUST go to school (Schulpflicht). I can see the advantages of this, but from my perspective after attending an American school for most of my life, this was a culture shock, hence my engross. Well, first day of school started and I'm already lost, I didn't know where my classes where, due to the fact that I never received a lesson plan, plus on that day I had sports outside of the school, this information was not given to me. So like a lost student on her first day I went to the secretary room to ask about where I need to be and how to get there. Mind you, I've only started learning German and it's been only three weeks. I didn't understand a word. I asked her to show me the way but she didn't understand me. So I decided to call one of my new classmates, no answer. I walked around for 25 minutes until I finally found a gymnasium 10 minutes away from the school and inside were my classmates. Well, to cut the story short I joined the others. Based on my perspective on the last three and a half years I've come to learn some things about Germans, so here is a list of my top three (the one's I've had contact with).

1. They drink a lot of alcohol, both teenagers and adults, even though they know about all the risk that comes with it.
2. They have groups of friends and if someone new tries to join their group or get to know them, the chances of getting shunned is quite high. Because they love being in their little bubble.
3. The teenagers I've encountered are mostly just childish, and sometimes I really pity them, at the ager of 17 and still thinks playing childish pranks are funny. They are disrespectful, they use a lot of verbal abuse and offensive language (I got called the N word on my first week).

This is not a generalization, it is based purely on my opinion and perspective.

Although Germany has lots of nice positive things like the great health care, financial aide, good infrastructure, and various others, it does have a lot of negative—for me would be the school system. I've always known school to be a place of fun, learning, understanding people from a different perspective, communication and best of all a place to make friends. But to me the school system is more like a work place that, you have to go to to earn money, and at the end of the day you go home and do the same thing all over again.

All in all, it's not a bad country, but I don't think it's the country for me, I have difficulties with the language, unfriendly people, bullies, racial profiling, and hateful language. Don't let me discouraged you, this is all based on my point of view. Germany is a great country to visit.