Upup.htm

Up, up and away...
as an exchange student to the USA!
by Karsten Stoll
(extracts from a series of five articles)

My high school year in America

I was ready to rock and roll! Finally all my cases were packed, I had my tickets in my hand, and my heart was filled with excitement. The greatest experience of my life was about to begin - a year abroad as an exchange student in the USA! I only knew names, no faces. I was on my way to a new family, a new home, and a new environment.

After a long flight with a group of other exchange students, I finally set foot on American soil. My host father was waiting for me in the lobby of Allentown International Airport. Big Rich grabbed my suitcases, threw them into the back of the large black truck, and started his exchange student welcoming speech about what he valued and expected. This lasted nearly the whole ride to East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania.
He only stopped talking to eat his Whopper and French fries at Burger King. I couldn't really eat anything, partly because I was still excited, but also because the rest of my appetite had been killed by Richard's speech. Thank God the journey from Allentown to East Stroudsburg only took us 45 minutes.
Finally we arrived at my new home, a nice old wooden building, where Rich showed me the big lights for playing soccer on their lawn and the basketball hoop. Then we went inside where my host mom Sharon gave me a hug straight away, even though I had never seen her. Bryan, their 14-year-old son, was running around the house, and Rich had to force him to say "hello" and to show me my room. After this extremely interesting day I probably fell asleep before I had even closed my eyes.
The next morning Jodi, the family's daughter, drove me to my new physician, who was supposed to give me a physical examination so I could play high school soccer. Jodi was a very good-looking girl who asked a lot of questions, but my active English was not quite good enough for a high level conversation.
After this we went to the High School to choose my courses. In the school I quickly discussed my subjects with my guidance counselor and left right after that. I just wanted to go home and sleep! At about 4pm. I fell into bed, slept until dinner, and then continued sleeping into what was to become

my best experience ever...

School starts: not quite what I had expected!

After I'd slept for about 48 hours in three days, I was ready to take on the world. After only five days of relaxing, I had to go to school. Sharon, my host mom and herself principal of an elementary school, was probably more excited than I was, because she had been trying to organize her school's new start through the whole summer break. I was dreaming of "Baywatch" girls and an easy year in school.

The first morning I had to get up was tough, but I was too excited to be tired. At ten past seven, after a typical breakfast of cereals and hot tea, Sharon, Bryan, my host brother, and I were ready to leave for school, which started at 7:40am. Bryan said the first day at school would be fun, because the students only sit around and make new friends. But this wasn't the most important and interesting thing that happened to me...
That morning I was wearing my baseball hat as I always do, but the first thing the teacher said to me was: "HAT, PLEASE". He expected me to take my hat off - how should I know that you weren't allowed to wear anything on your head??? but at least I didn't get into trouble for it.

Well, this hat rule wasn't the only thing that was even stricter than in German schools. We were only allowed to eat once a day - in our lunch period (from 12:30 to 12:55pm.). If anybody got caught eating otherwise, he or she had to report to one of the assistant principals, so he was in deep trouble.
Another interesting thing was that somebody watched when you had to go to the restroom. The security personnel made sure that nobody smoked in the lavatories - or anywhere else! In addition to the security people our school with over 2000 students also had a school police force! The police had to make sure that fights and other trouble were "nipped in the bud" (im Keim erstickt); they even had to organize the cars on the school parking lot. The only thing that nobody minded about was chewing gum.

Everybody in Germany had said that American high school subjects would be easy, so I thought I would have a year without school work,but I was wrong. If you wanted to have a good report card, you had to do a lot of homework. School finished at 2:40pm. After school I did sports until about 6pm. and then I sat down for about two hours to do homework. But generally it was easy work. I've never worked as much as I did in America, but I have never had as much success.
The "Baywatch" dream did not come true, but I had a year filled with a lot of surprises. Of course, the discipline and working attitude was one of them, but it was not the biggest one...

Holidays! Food! And a bit of school in between!

Life as an exchange student in America also meant that I had the chance to experience a lot of American holidays. As an average German school student I had never known about all the additional days they had off. Of course Americans celebrate Christmas, but they also have Labor Day, Halloween, and Thanksgiving in the fall, which are totally different from all our European holidays.
The American holidays are all very commercialized and are meant to give the economy a boost. But they are also a great chance to get together with your family and to try a lot of different foods.

The first one I experienced was Labor Day on the first Monday of September. I was really happy that I did not have to go to school that day since I was really tired from my journey from Germany. My family and I went to have a picnic on the beach of our local community's lake. This picnic was organized by the Spring-Lake Community, a group of our neighbors who were responsible for taking care of the lake. Everybody brought something to eat, so we had a large table full of the most delicious things you can imagine, e.g. chicken wings, casseroles, breads, salads and barbecue. I ate so much that I could not go to the football match in the evening because I was sick to my stomach.

T hen on 30th October there is Halloween . Every American under eighteen gets dressed up and goes out to "Trick or Treat". In our area we were allowed to knock on everybody's door and give them the chance to choose between giving us a sweet or not; if they did not give us a little something we would play some kind of practical joke on them. My host brother was rather successful - he got about three pounds of sweets. Unfortunately I did not get as much because I was too old and some house owners would not give me anything. The only bad thing about Halloween is that you do not get out of school, but my school really tried not to make life hard for us. Nearly every teacher showed a video and brought in some sweets or cookies, so we had a nice relaxing day.

T he biggest American holiday is most certainly Thanksgiving at the end of November. The Americans celebrate their country's history and of course the harvest. Up till that day in November I had never seen so many things to eat - even more than on Labor Day!!! My host mother's brother and his family visited us, so we had a nice family gathering.Unfortunately I was doing wrestling at the time, so I had to keep my weight down to be able to compete in my weight class, and what that meant is probably clear to everybody.

T he next big meal was not to come until Christmas . On Christmas Eve we went to church and after that we went to a cocktail party, where we were served everything one can possibly think of. The next morning we unpacked our presents and left to go to my host mother's family. For Christmas we were out of school for 14 days, but the last day at school was fun too, since we were just watching movies and eating snacks. In America Christmas is a really commercial do, presents are just brought to be useful and look expensive but not to show love.

Sports - the next biggest thing to work!

Before I left Germany to spend a year in America I thought that I was the world's greatest athlete, but I did not think like that any more when I left the USA. As an exchange student I had the chance to participate in three different high-school sports whereas in Germany I had only played soccer.
On my application I had written that I loved sports and I found the perfect family. My host dad Rich was a basketball fanatic, since he had coached a college basketball team. Sharon, my host mother, was the most successful hockey high-school coach in our town. Jodi, my older host sister, was a fairly good college swimmer and my small host brother was an above-average soccer and basketball player. So the only thing we did besides school and work was sports.

I n America the year is split up into three sports seasons; fall-sports like soccer and football, winter-sports like wrestling and basketball, and spring-sports like baseball and track and field. Every school offers a large variety of different sports and it is important for the reputation of the school how many sports they are able to offer and how good they are. Football, basketball and baseball are the most popular sports.

If you want to see a high-school football match you even have to reserve seats sometimes. This is the case if your neighboring town comes to play against your team. There was massive rivalry between my school, East-Stroudsburg High, and Stroudsburg High, our neighboring school. The day when our team played against Stroudsburg the stadium was packed and a group of our guys stole a few jerseys out of their locker room. Eventually they got their jerseys back and we won 60 to 7.
Unfortunately I was not able to play football, because I was too small (5 ft 11 and 160 lbs), so I played soccer. I thought I would be the big star in an American soccer team, but I was wrong! Since they practised every day, and had been using the school weight rooms for years, they were physically stronger than I was, but in the end I was able to catch up and played in the Varsity team (the best team) a few times.
In winter I did wrestling to stay in shape. It was far more than just staying in shape because it is an extremely exhausting sport. We practised in a very small room with the heating on high to lose weight. Even though I did not like the sport - it was too rough and you had to keep your weight, my record was OK (11-8, but I never wrestled varsity /=university/).
In spring I ran for the track team. I thought that I would be good at it since I was (and still am) a passionate jogger, but jogging is completely different from running a two-mile race. I always started, but I never won. Nevertheless it was great fun. Altogether it was a fun experience to do sports with a lot of different coaches and teams that all wanted to win and have a good time.

A t weekends the average American doesn't do any sports but he watches them. The biggest sports day in the year is Superbowl Sunday. Every single American probably watches the game. The advertising industry knows this and has streched the half-time break from 15 minutes to one hour filled with a lot of commercials and a little bit of show.
In America, sports are not an exclusively male thing, but for the whole family. Every American I met who participated in a team wanted only two things - success and fun.

Graduation Day - fun, food and tassels!

Everybody who had been to the USA told me how much fun, how interesting, exciting, and what a big experience Graduation Day would be, but I did not believe them. I didn't want to leave Germany with too many expectations, so I just didn't think about it.
In the second term every other senior got "Senioritis", that is a kind of illness you get when you want to leave school as quickly as possible and do as little work as possible. I was not allowed to get this illness, because I still had to go to school in Germany for two more years. We, the seniors, planned all kinds of activities which we would be able to enjoy in the last term of our school career. We wanted to go to the theatre, have a picnic, have fun at the prom and last but not least enjoy our Graduation Day.

The prom

was a big spectacular. Both the Junior and Senior classes were allowed to go there. It took place in a hotel with a large ballroom. Everybody was dressed nicely, some rented limousines for the day. That night 800 students were going to dance, have a nice meal and have fun. We did dance and have a lot of fun, only the meal was cold and not very tasty.

T he next few days passed and then we had to do our final exams. After we had done them we practised for

Graduation Day

. It was fairly difficult to organize 400 students who had to march in a long row at the same speed at the right time. Repetitions and frustrated teachers were the rule while we were practising.
Finally the big day came. Everybody was excited and since we had to wear a shirt and dark trousers under our gowns (purple for the boys and white for the girls), we were extremely hot that warm sunny day. At 10am we marched into the stadium. The long purple and white row seemed to never end. We sat down on the football field and then the class-president and the two best students held a speech. After the speeches the students received their high-school diplomas and we turned the tassels (Quasten, Troddeln) on our flat caps from one side of the cap to the other as the sign of a completed school career. The only thing my host mother worried about was the game we played with big rubber balls at the start. Some pupils had smuggled in big balls under their gowns and had decided to play with them as a joke.
My host mom surprised me when I got home. She had bought a purple and white graduation cake for me and even purple and white balloons with "Congratulations Graduate" on them. We had a little barbecue on the patio (Terrasse).
It was a great day with nothing but highpoints, an extraordinary experience and a nice end to my stay in America.