Ein Lächeln als Dankeschön - Amebii Ghana

this before: couldn’t sleep during theweekdays and even worse during theweekend. Every day, I stayed in myoffice or walked along the street untilit was too dark and I had to comeback to the flat. At the same time,nobody wanted me to rent a room/flat. My sent box accumulated intoover 100 emails but only got 5 repliedand I made over 70 phone calls. Mostof them said they’ll contact me againbut rarely kept their promises T_T.Hunting for a flat in Landau is like findinga needle in the hay. I even visitedone flat shared by 11 people inNussdorf. They knew my situation butthey still said they couldn’t rent to mebecause I’m a foreigner. Other flatswere nearly all kind of weird: eitherthey wanted a man from 23-30 yearsold instead of a girl or they didn’twant people to stay during weekendor they din’t have a washing machine(because their family is just aroundthe corner) or they didn’t like me becauseI’m not funny or pretty enoughor they wanted a person who canspeak German; or I had to put coinsinto the shower to get water out (it’s50cent per 3minutes) or the landlorddidn’t want to rent to foreigners (becauseone French guy didn’t pay thelast month rent) or no heating andgot a big wind hole in the room…Because I had no address, I couldn’textend my visa, get registered as astudent, get a bank card and get aninsurance card. When I begged mycolleague to use her address, I asked afriend to help me to go to a bank or insurancecompany. But she mixed mysurname and given name. So I didn’tget a bank card and insurance card aftertwo months… All my fancies aboutGermany were totally destroyed bythe nightmare during the first threemonths in Landau. I cried all the timeand didn’t want to tell my parents incase they worry about me…“Fang, you want to say something?”one professor asked me. I woke upfrom the memory and found myselfstill in the meeting. “Yes, it takes methree months to settle down. In mycase, everything was quite difficult…”All the people in the meeting wereshocked by my experience and theprofessor felt really sorry for me. I didinterviews among other internationalstudents and found I’m not the onlycase. I really hope things will neverhappen again. We’re far away fromhome and come over here. The onlypurpose is to finish our study andnothing else. If you receive an emailsent from a person like me, pleasehelp them. Because you’re not just aperson from Landau, you’re one personfrom Germany. What you’re doingis not just for yourself. It’s also for yourcountry: for the world-fame of Germany.Fang Zhaozhao@uni-landau.de