Nye was based more on telling a personal novella, as Stone Horse was aimed more towards telling more of an informative story with the small chapter where the author told of their own personal experience. In our own essays which are more person of own experiences, that helped shaped who we are today. That is shown also in Nye, which deals with a more life changing experience verses a day out in the desert. It is an excellent comparison in the different types of personal essays one can take in doing a essay. The experience may consist of year long experience or one day, or even one hour. We can all have life changing experience, and the experience might only take seconds to impact ones whole life.

The home, a long debated question of phiolophers and sociologists, Aristophanes said in 300 BC, “A man's homeland is wherever he prospers”. Does this mean that man home is where he makes a good living? As George Moore would say, “A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it”. This goes along with Aristophanes philosophy of home. But what is home? Is it the home structure itself the house, the kitchen, one’s bedroom? Or is one’s home the family, the pets, the neighbors, or the coffee shop on the corner? For Lois McMaster Bujold, “it is the people not the place which is home.” The definition of home is the Home is a place where a person lives, perhaps spends much of the time, or where a person is comfortable to be. While a house or other residential dwelling is often referred to as a home, the concept of "home" is broader than a physical dwelling. Home is often a place of refuge and safety, where worldly cares fade, with things and people one loves becoming the focus. It can be the place of one's birth, where you grew up, or maybe your first apartment or house.
As college students most of us stepping into the real world for the first time without our mom or dad to hold our hands, and for many of us leaving home behind. But are we leaving home behind; or we just making a new home a place it hang our hat? As Tom Wolfe said, "You can't go home again." Many of us can not go home until Thanksgiving or even Christmas. Do many of us want to go home, or is this all part of Campbell’s theory of a hero we will all come back bearing gifts. John Howard Payne said it the best, “Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.” Even though we many travel the world it always feels good to come back home even just for a glace to rekindle ones’ inner sprit.

My group gave me much to work with to the point that I realized that it was not a good composition of what an life change moment was for me. I thank you for all your great comments, and I hope you all enjoy my new piece.

"Je deteste des Americains, " said the old German woman sitting across from me on the airplane. Her face contorted into a grimace of disgust as she and her friend continued to complain that Americans had no culture, that they never learned another language, and that their inferior customs were spreading throughout Europe like an infectious disease. Each hair on the back of my neck sprang to attention, as I strained to hear the women's inflammatory remarks. I gripped my Nike bag harder with each insulting phrase.
I had been traveling to Wels, Austria for twenty six hours, during which time I had been told by my friend who I was going to pick me up that his grandfather was going to be picking me up instead, and spoke no English. It then hit me to why I had been listing to German language CD’s every morning on the to work. I had already become conversational in German but had not become accustomed to the new culture. In which was a culture which I had believed to be rich in tolerance and acceptance. Naturally, the women's remarks hurt, but was I really an "ugly American?" Did I have no appreciation of anything other than Nike or Coca-Cola? Had I not been touched by the new world I had been exposed to?
Without question, my three weeks in Austria changed my life in countless ways. From the minute I stepped off the plane in Munich’s Airport, the vastly different sights along the clean street, the ubiquitous smells of rich delicious German cuisine, and my feelings of excitement about my new surroundings told me that I definitely was "not in Kansas anymore." My best friend Phillip helped greatly in modifying my attitudes, as for the first time I was with peers from a country which I had only read about. Although it was sometimes difficult trying to find links between my self and my Austrians or German friends, I soon came to enjoy my new environment. By the time I left, I was wondering how I ever could survive the boredom of the United States. This is not to say that, prior to this; I had not been closed up in a bland box of a world. I had traveled throughout the Caribbean and The United Sates, my mother and father travel annually: a practice my family and I continue to this day. Thus my exposure to these various different nationalities in Austria built on my foundations of cultural awareness, and was rather laying a cornerstone for it.
My understanding of my new environment was aided tremendously by my ability to speak a little German, and was subsequently one of the best gifts I brought back from my three weeks stay in Austria. An entire year of school lessons could not have taught me as much of the language as I learned form speaking with my Austrian friends, shopping in the local stores, or ordering in cafes and restaurants. My proficiency in German surprised not only the family that I was staying with, but also my parents back at home.
America will never again seem the same to me. Austria gave me enough distances to look at my country through objective eyes. Traveling throughout Europe was like a trip with Gulliver. It gave me the ability to look inside myself and discern my country's faults as well as its numerous strengths. Like the German women's remarks, it hurt me to find that the United States is not the only country in the world with a rich and stimulating environment, but also an environment that is greatly homogenized. With my new perspective, I saw that America was not what it had been. Then I thought for a moment and realized that America had not changed, but I had.