Looking back, I have no trouble saying that this was one of the best years of my entire life; it might even claim the top spot.

There are various reasons that lead me to this assessment.

My junior year in college proved to be full of challenges that pushed me close to the limit of my capabilities. However, I managed to master these challenges with results that I would have considered impossible just months earlier.

Although my success in school was of vast importance, my internship with the Daily Sentinel was without doubt the most significant event that made 2009 such an outstanding year for me. I had been hoping to be able to intern with a company in Iowa ever since I started college. Thus, I was exhilarated when the Sentinel offered me to intern with them for eight weeks. I am surely glad that nobody got to see my extensive happy dance when I first received the news.

The internship proved to be everything I had hoped for and more and I enjoyed each and every second of my time in Le Mars.

Alongside these most crucial events, I finally fulfilled a dream I'd been having for quite some time and visited Bavaria in southern Germany. I had never been down south before and I was amazed to see how beautiful my country is.

All in all, things just seemed to fall in place in 2009.

With a year coming to an end, it seems inevitable to wonder what the next year might bring.

I do not know if 2010 will be able to keep up with 2009. However, it will certainly be just as important.

I will graduate from college in late July. As much as I am looking forward to completing this chapter in my life, I am also worried by the uncertainty of what the following chapter is going to bring.

It is still my desire to move to the United States after graduation, preferably Iowa. I have been working towards that goal for five years now. However, the success of my plans depends on circumstances that are out of my control. Will I finally win the Green Card Lottery? Or will I get accepted into grad school? What if I neither win a Green Card nor get into grad school?

Despite this uncertainty, there is one thing I know for a fact: Sometime next year, I will cut the last corner on Highway 75 and I will see the Blue Bunny plants and the water tower. As always, I will get goose bumps and thank the Lord that I made it home again... even if only for a visit.