Episode Transcript
Hello, my name is Aziz and I'm the son of a divorced mother. She is my superhero. That's
why it's important for me to support women to share their uniqueness, their personalities,
perspectives, and emotions about this world. In these difficult times in human history,
we need to bring the cultures of the world together. And when we listen to real people,
to real lives of women from other countries, we connect our humanity without our differences
or stereotypes and we get inspired by their stories to live a better life. That's what
this podcast is all about. My guest today is Sophie Thirstappen. Sophie is from Switzerland.
She is the first Swiss girl in this project and currently she's doing an exchange in Chicago
in the United States. Sophie adores soccer and is very interested in history, especially
the history of Chicago. Sophie, how are you today? Hello, I'm good. I'm honored. I'm lucky.
I'm privileged to have you here and very curious about you as a person. So I'll begin with
this nice question. If your friends in Switzerland could describe your personality, what would
they say and would it be different compared to the new friends you made in Chicago? I
think they will say that I'm a really outgoing person. I love to talk to new people and I'm
always down for new things and I think my friends in Chicago, they would probably describe
me more or less the same. At first I was a little bit shy as well because I had a huge
culture shock but now I think they would describe me the same. Oh my god, I have so many questions.
Let's begin with that one. You mentioned culture shock. What kind of culture shock was that?
What was different compared to Switzerland? Tell me more about the differences and the
experience. So when I came here the first day in school, I'm used to have just like
one class and be with them the whole day but here in America you have like for every subject
you have a different class. That was something that was really new for me and I as well first
thought like how can I find friends because every hour there's gonna be like new people
I meet but I still found friends luckily and I would as well probably say that just like
how school is, it's like long one lesson is 50 minutes and you have five minutes pauses
and in Switzerland you had like one one hour was one lesson was just 45 minutes and you
had 10 minutes breaks and yeah you were as well much more free. Here you cannot go out
during school time as well in lunch time. You always have to be in the building and
in Switzerland we could just always go out for lunch wherever we want. Yeah like things
like that. I understand fully and completely and since you had the experience of making
new friends in a new culture, imagine someone who's an introvert, they're not outgoing
and maybe they need to go to university or exchange in a totally new culture and they're
alone and lonely and want to make friends. How do you go about making new friends? Do
you have a way during conversation maybe you find some specific connections or your own
tips or tricks in order to begin new friendships in the best way? How would you do that and
can you share? I think it's really important to get out of your comfort zone and just speak
to you like to speak to people ask them about how their day was and I think there are just
like everywhere are people you are matching with. So you will find someone who has the
same energy as you do probably not that the first day some like I had I had like two weeks
I was pretty much really alone these two weeks and then I found friends. So yeah you just
need to give yourself much time talk to many people and don't be too desperate if you like
if you don't find friends that fast. Thank you that's absolutely very useful and you
mentioned that you're down for whatever you're outgoing maybe you like to have new adventures
try new things at the same time you know if you read about psychology on average a lot
of women need safety they worry about danger not so much risk unless it's like totally
safe. So how do you like what motivates you or inspires you to be down for whatever to
go out of your comfort zone to take risks to do new exciting things is it like you think
oh my god the pandemic taught me that life is too short I'm gonna carpe diem and seize
the day or we were born that way or you love the excitement and new emotions or how are
you able to overcome maybe the deep fear and need for safety in order to take more adventures
and risk. I think probably I was like always outgoing person and always down to for new
things and I just think to myself if I'm not going out of my comfort zone my exchange will
not be that great how it would be if I like just try new things just talk to people I
usually would probably not and yeah. Thank you so are you much more adventurous when
you're in Chicago compared to Switzerland or even when you were in Switzerland you wanted
to meet new people try new things you were always out of your comfort zone. I would say
here probably much more because in Switzerland I actually did already like many new things
and just like I have there I have like my normal day and my normal day routine and I
just pretty much do the same every day but here because I don't know it's hard to explain
but I think here I go out of my comfort zone more and try new things and try more new things
because I think like probably I find something who I would really love to do like a sport
or something like that who as well can do when I come back to Switzerland. Thank you
that's so fascinating and when you spoke about making new friends you spoke about people's
energy that it matches your energy and that's important. Are you an empath? Are you able
to feel people's energy even without talking to them just through their body language and
when they're near you you can feel their vibe and their aura or do you need to talk to people
and then you notice the topics they speak about if they're passionate in their words
and that to you translates to energy or how do you experience people's energy? I think
probably just by talking to them for like one or two minutes I can mostly like mostly
see if we match like really fast. I don't want to be like a person who just by seeing
someone thinks oh I cannot be friends with them or because they look like this or something
like that I always want to talk to people because sometimes I think looks don't say
much about your personality so it's really important to talk but I can like figure it
out after like one minute talking I think. Thank you and I know you wrote you're interested
in the history of Chicago. Can you speak a bit more about that? Why does Chicago have
a rich history or how did you discover that it's a cool city? Was it from some movies,
from some books? Did you choose specifically Chicago and the US? Tell me about this side
of your experience and exchange. So I was like coming to I can choose like it was a
coincidence that I came to Chicago and in school I have to subject history of Chicago
who is my favorite subject and yeah therefore I learned many new things about Chicago I
didn't know and yeah like for example I learned much about the immigrants from Chicago like
and where they settle and as well a big really interesting part is the Chicago fire where
like a big part of the city got burned down. Thank you and now that you're in the US you
had your culture shock. How would you describe to people who maybe don't have Swiss friends
or never visited Switzerland? How is a teenage Swiss girl in 2023 already? Because Switzerland
is known for being a country that is neutral, that is more peaceful in that way. So are
you typically Swiss and does that even exist as a concept or are you a mix of like Hollywood,
a bit American of the UK and royalty and the Queen, a little bit of K-pop and Korean, Japan
and anime and you're like a mix of many cultures that make you who you are today or is there
a traditional or typical person or culture that can be described as Swiss and if so how
is a Swiss girl such as yourself maybe even before going for your exchange what attitudes,
what beliefs do you have in 2022? So Switzerland is like there are not that many people who
are actually from Switzerland. I'm as well just like half Swiss and because I have friends
from many different cultures I experienced that like I have a really good friend from
Korea and I was watching with her K-dramas really often and it was really fun or I have
a friend from Albania and she taught me how to dance Albanian so I would say I'm not like
typical Swiss because it's just not really existing I think so yeah.
Thank you and you're half Swiss and what is the other half?
I'm half Swiss and half German. That's fantastic. I think you're also the first like pure German
rather than more of an immigrant to Germany on this podcast so you're double first and that's
really cool and to ask you about soccer you went from a country where people adore soccer where
they follow it now is the World Cup probably in Switzerland they're watching it to go to a place
where soccer is not the dominant kind of sport. How is that experience? Did you find for example
baseball a bit confusing? American football to be somehow like a weird thing? How was your
experience going into a culture where soccer is kind of a secondary kind of sport compared to the
more super popular other sports? It was really weird at first like in my school the people
they adore football and I was watching with my host siblings football but I don't really like
it because I don't really understand it even though people like told me the rules because
it's like a really fast game I sometimes just don't understand it and yeah because now it's
like World Cup I'm watching every game Switzerland is playing and today I had to wake
up at 4 a.m. just to see Switzerland playing and it's a little bit sad because like the times when
my teams are playing is mostly like really they're like stupid times sometimes I have school or it's
in the middle of the night and yeah and I'm pretty much like the only one who's really into soccer
in as well my school so nobody's really watching it so I cannot really talk with anybody about it
but it's all right like I can talk with my friends from Switzerland about it so yeah.
Thank you and now that you have your exchange in Chicago did it change your perspective on
your future desires for where to live? Do you plan to return to Switzerland and spend
many years there or did this open your eyes to the possibility of living maybe in California
or becoming a nomad where you will go visit many countries live in six months here and there or
how is this different? Do you view the life you're experiencing in Chicago as something
you can live forever or do you somehow think it's cool to have this as an exchange but I would love
I would love to return to Switzerland and have my bearings my typical habits there or you're thinking
yes let's go to California and New York and Miami and explore the whole world. I think first I will
go back to Switzerland and go on college there because college is free in Switzerland and here
people have to pay really really much but I can imagine that I will come back I don't know if I
could live in Chicago or America forever but probably for a few years that would be really
interesting as well like traveling I really want to travel through the US and see different
cities and as well in the US like it really matters where you are because like the South
of America is like so different than the North so I want to experience like both
sides so I think I will probably travel through the US and live there for a few years but I
cannot really imagine living there forever. Thank you and since you're down for new experiences I
imagine you love new emotions to experience a lot but for you do you prefer life where you have a
lot of like positive emotions only, good vibes only, where you're feeling maybe good, happy,
surprised, joy etc without any negativity or do you want to feel all the emotions you want to watch
a sad movie and feel heartbroken and cry you want to watch a murder documentary and feel afraid you
want some drama in your life you're like that's what makes life electric otherwise I'm bored.
Is this something that describes you or are you like yes every day I want only gratitude only good
vibes and no other emotions? I think you need everything like you need good experiences good
feelings but as well bad because I think out of bad feelings you can learn really much about your
self and be stronger so yeah I think you need everything you need good bad scared everything.
Thank you and you mentioned studying in college in Switzerland do you have in mind the subject
you would like to study and if so why why is it interesting for you? I don't know recently I think
probably either something with economy and law because that's my main subject in Switzerland
and it's just like really interesting because it shows like how the world is going or probably as
well psychology I cannot really speak that word out because I really like to help people I'm
really interested in like why are people behaving the way they do like and yeah it's just it always
interested me I was when I was younger I was listening to many podcasts about it and yeah.
Thank you and since you're mentioning psychology there is this idea that when people speak
different languages they have significantly different personalities so when you speak
German let's say are you a different person do you have different behaviors compared to you speaking
in English? I think I probably do because when I speak in German I know every word I'm speaking
like because it's like my mother's mother tongue and so I feel more confident and when I'm talking
English I always have to like think about what I wanna what do I want to say now how I'm gonna
tell that so I probably yeah I'm probably not that confident in English yet because I just
don't know the words really good. Thank you and since you're speaking about confidence and you
love psychology how can you in your own words or from your own perspective or in the dictionary
of Sophie Terstappen describe confidence how is it is it a feeling is it an attitude is it ignoring
the haters what is confidence for you? I think just when you are enough just enough with yourself
when you know like okay I'm not perfect but I'm like good with yourself like when you know like
people are hating on you because they're jealous just know that you're good enough that you are
a strong woman and or a strong man. Thank you so much Sophie this was my privilege my honor to
share about your life your experience with this exchange who you are with this world and I wish
you success I wish you a lot of fun and new experiences and learning about yourself there
in Chicago and thank you again for participating. Thank you so much that I could be a part of your
part of your podcast.
