I am from Germany. When I was 14 I came to England for four weeks with a friend. My friend was 14 also. You probably think my parents are crazy, but my family have been travelling around the world – with me in tow – since I was born.
My mum was naturally worried about me travelling without them for the first time to another country. My dad was too, but he was understanding of my need to see more of the world. I wanted to improve my English as well.
My father insisted, that if I wanted to travel, that I set up the placement with a language school. I also had to find a host family to live with. I had to set this up myself, which wasn’t easy. I mean I was 14 and my English was pretty bad.
But that was another rule my dad had insisted upon. If I wanted it, I had to make it happen. Anyway, I got everything done. I found a family to look after me and made all the arrangements.
I spent the month in Torquay. It was lovely. But Torquay and England are not important in this story… What I haven’t explained is that this was all part of a wider plan – to get to America! And I planned to stay for a lot longer than one month. I went to England to prove I could do it.
A year later I was waving goodbye to my family and friends at Frankfurt Airport, 15 years old and about to spend a year in Red Bay, a tiny town on the border of Alabama and Mississippi. Yeah, I hadn’t heard of it before either!
Getting to that point was incredibly difficult. The process of applying to an exchange organisation to enable me to get to the US was arduous. I had to go to many interviews and take many tests at offices three hours from my home.
Each meeting would last for hours. I had to be tested in listening comprehension, writing, reading and analysing, which I had to prepare for by watching hours of English language television and movies. That may sound fun, but at 15 I also wanted to be hanging out with my friends, and studying for my actual schoolwork, rather than just sitting in front of a TV.
But it was just something I had to do. I couldn’t pass the tests without doing it. And I couldn’t get to America without passing the tests.
I passed all my tests and the exchange organisation took me on. They organised a host family for me and signed me up at a school called Red Bay High.
I was shocked when I arrived. Red Bay is small: really small. And it was brown. There was no grass… there were trees, sometimes, but it was just brown.
Every 200 yards there was house, then nothing. And then another house. And nothing. Bielefeld, my hometown, was 100 times as big. That’s not a figure of speech; literally it has one hundred times the population of Red Bay.
My street, where my house is in Germany, was as big as the entire town centre of Red Bay. My school had 2,500 pupils; the entire population of Red Bay is just over 3,000.
Everything was new to me. The lifestyle was very different and, at the beginning, I had difficulties with the food because I was vegetarian. During my entire ten months there I never met another vegetarian. Not one. It became obvious that I wasn’t going to survive without eating meat while I was there.
After a while, everything settled down and I started to fit in. I made new friends and became very close to my host family – I remain in contact with them even now.
Going to an American High School was just how I expected it to be. It was great. I joined the cheerleader, track and tennis teams. I made a decision to become as integrated in the school as possible, and they were welcoming, which was amazing.
They were very excited because I was German, and obviously different from them. During the American Football season, friends and I went to watch our team play every Friday night. I definitely can say that I got to experience the American school spirit. I loved having a locker. We don’t have them in Germany and I did everything you were supposed to do: photographs, mirror, and pencil case… it was very cool.
I took pictures and sent to me friends and family and they were all, like, wow!
Es sind die kleinen Dinge im Leben – It’s the small things in life…
I did things I have never done before; I went hunting, to rodeos and fairs, which were very ‘country’. I went mud riding on quad bikes, which we did pretty much every other day. We went fishing, where we had to look out for poisonous snakes. There were barbeques every night during the summer. It was just an amazing, relaxing experience, surrounded by people I became hugely fond of.
The only time I really struggled was at Christmas. My family in Germany celebrates the festivities in a big way. My grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins come over on Christmas Eve. We go out, spend time together for dinner, and then, on Christmas Day, we meet the rest of the family to eat at different restaurants.
It was lovely with my host family in Red Bay, but Christmas was the only time while I was there I felt a long way from home.
It’s been almost a year since I arrived back in Germany. I’m 17 now. The whole experience had a huge impact on me. It was life changing. My worldview is very different now.
When living away from home you do more in 10 months than you would, at home, in 10 years. You only have a certain amount of time to do everything you want to, whereas at home you get stuck in a routine.
This is a good lesson to learn: do things when you get the opportunity, even if you don’t think it’s going to be exciting. Every experience, good or bad, is something to learn from. Nothing is a waste of time: except when you do nothing with it.
Being able to travel has left me with a better understanding of the world and the people in it. I thought that the ‘correct’ way to live was the way I did with my family. But I quickly understood that there are many different ways; that each person finds their own way, that’s right for them.
In Germany, I believed that if you didn’t have lots of money you couldn’t be truly happy, but it was clear from my time in the US, that it isn’t true. I discovered community: where people look out for each other, are kind to each other, for no reason but to be kind. And that’s something I apply to my own life now. Money is important, but being good is better!
Before I left Germany, my friends and I were concerned that we would grow apart over the year I spent away. It’s true that I’ve changed a lot during my year in America. It wasn’t until I went home that I realised how different I was.
But the result is that I’ve now become even closer with my friends than I was before, for some reason.
We’re planning to travel together this summer!
