By Sarah Buchert

Every two years something miraculous happens, twelve students from Germany come onto our campus and into our lives. Now if you are not familiar with the German exchange program, you must be new to TPA or your ears have run away without you, or you just simply did not know; in any case, every two years TPA has a cultural exchange with a German school in Regensburg called Pindl-Gymnasium. They send twelve students to TPA for two and a half weeks and we send twelve students to their school for two and a half weeks. The exchange students arrived at Sky Harbor Airport to a big waiting party, full of signs and cheering. They proceed to enjoy fun activities for the next two and a half weeks. They went to class with their host student, they attended a robotics competition, and they attended a raging “Welcome to Arizona” party at the Urias household, spent time with their host family, and participated in many other activities.

When I first described our school system to my German student, Chiara Throrer, she was amazed at how different our school systems are. In Germany, they use years to represent grades while we have numbers. She was amazed at how much we socialized after school while in Germany; they socialize very little after school. For them, after their school day is finished, they directly go home and do not hangout or socialize. In Germany, school is stressed more heavily and grades are more important; it is all study, study, study. They have sixteen classes a week and may only have one class per subject a week. They do not have their math divided into algebra, pre-Calc, calculus as we do, they only have math. This is the same with their other subjects. They also have a different grading system than us; they use numbers, 1-6, with 1 being the highest, six being the lowest.

When the Germans went to the Biosphere in Tucson, with the ninth graders, they enjoyed the trip but it was less fun for them because they did not understand the complex terms used by the tour guide. The explanations the tour guide was giving are considered higher level German level, not normally spoken unless you are studying in that field. When I needed help writing an essay but did not know the vocabulary words to use, Chiara provided me assistance but the formations of some of my sentences was considered higher German. They would instead speak a simplified version of that sentence using phrases that are more common.

They took an overnight trip to the Grand Canyon and they enjoyed it. Chiara and a small group of Germans sacrificed sleep to get up at 5am, to watch the sunrise over the Grand Canyon, were struck silent by the breath taking view of the sun rising. When Chiara shared this with me, she said, “I tried to take a picture but it looked cheap when compared to the real thing. It was an insult to what I saw. I have no words to describe it; it’s a sight you have to see for yourself”. This amazed me because when I went to the Grand Canyon two years ago with the previous group of German students, my first thoughts were, “Wow, that’s big, I wonder how deep it is?” and Chiara described how amazing the Grand Canyon was. Apparently, in Germany, they have nothing to compare the Grand Canyon to; they only have forest, and lots of greenery. Arizona is a whole other world for them. I asked her why she wanted to come to Arizona, it is just deserts nothing interesting, and she said the exact same thing about Germany. Who would want to go there, it is boring; apparently we both longed for a different world and both thought ours was uninteresting, go figure.

They hiked ASU’s “A” mountain, visited ASU, and went rowing at Tempe Town Lake. Chiara was glad she came when she did, if they were coming in the summer, she did not think she would survive the heat. The temperature when they were here was a little hotter than their normal summer day. Herr Bushel, the German student’s English teacher who came with them, started to splash them with water, getting them wet; and as all people know, when one is splashed, one splashes back. They were so wet; they just decided to swim in the lake, as it would not make a difference anymore. Chiara really had fun in the water, although she said her clothes smelled bad afterwards.

They visited the AZ Science Center using public transportation such as the Valley Metro Buses and light rail. Later that same day they had the going away party at The Lakes courtesy of Kerry Camberg. There was lots of talking, dancing, volleyball, and eating. It was a fantastic way to end two and half weeks of hosting.

At the going away party, the “Who will stay with who” in Germany was finalized, everybody now had somebody to stay with when in Germany. This arrangement had to be figured out because the who and how of hosting is different for the Germans. At TPA, we choose who we want to host by checking out their Facebook and then selecting the student, we want. Some TPA students host more than one student, and some host a student even if they are not going to Germany themselves. In Germany, if one wants to go to America they have to host, no matter what; no hosting, no going. Their teacher looks at their grades, their attendance, and their performance and then chooses who gets to go to America. At TPA, it is a free for all, first come, first serve. Chiara said 53 people wanted to come to America but only twelve were chosen. The exchange trip is only available to 10^th grade students in Germany. TPA high school students can go to Germany no matter what their year in school.

For those of you who are coffee addicts who love Starbucks and want to go to Germany, I have some bad news for you; they only have two or so Starbucks in Germany. Every time the Germans saw a Starbucks, they wanted to go inside. Chiara remarked, “You are so lucky, you can go to Starbucks whenever you want, we can’t”. This was remarkable to me because we have grown up with Starbucks or coffee shops being just around the corner wherever you go, but in Germany, they do not have this.

I asked Chiara what she thought of America, she said, “If I had to choose two words to describe America it would be big and varied”. In America, we have gallons of milk, big chip bags, chips for lunch and burgers everywhere, in Germany they do not. Their milk comes in small cartons, their chip bags are smaller than ours are, and they would only eat chips when they watch a movie or want a snack, they would never have chips with a meal. They also have less of a variety of foods; they only have the original Oreo’s, and an extremely small variety of chips, about 1/8^th of a chip aisle at any Walmart. They were amazed at the different variety of Oreo’s and only heard that different varieties existed.

Amazingly, when they first were picked up from the airport that first night in America, almost half of the German exchange students went to “In and Out” burger with their exchange families. Chiara said that eating burgers was so American. She could never go back to eating burgers in Germany, the only burgers they have are McDonalds. On an upside to Germany, they have the same chocolate bars we do but theirs taste better because they are made with a higher quality of chocolate than ours.

They were all excited to go paintballing because in Germany, you cannot go paintballing or shooting until you are eighteen not even with a parent as it is against the law. They loved the paint ball activity and did not want to stop. After they went paintballing, they went to Niki Gourleys’ house for movies. They watched Zoolander. Chiara was sad to leave; she needed to change her clothes from shorts and tanks to winter boots, jackets, and warm pants.

It was extremely fun hosting a German student; it was just like having a roommate. If I were given the opportunity to do this again, I would do it in a heartbeat, as soon as I could convince my parents to host again. When Richard Gion, a German student, was asked what he thought about the trip he said, “I like the whole trip; it was kind of a dream for me. Arizona is really cool, but a little bit hot. I met a lot of people; the most are of TPA and in the exchange project, but also guys from other schools at our soccer games or the parties”. Overall, they had an extremely good time and enjoyed America, as I, and the other eleven going to Germany might say, we cannot wait for the adventure of a lifetime.