ASMSA students Nina Thomas and Kenny Ventress knew the 2019-20 academic year would be unlike any other they had experienced. They just didn’t how different it would be.
Thomas of Hot Springs and Ventress of Benton originally were members of the Class of 2020, but both were accepted into the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange for the 2019-20 academic year. CBYX allows students to spend a full year living with a German host family and attending a German school. They would spend the next year in Germany and return to ASMSA for their senior year as a member of the Class of 2021.
The first part of the year went about as expected. Thomas lived with a host family in Wiefelstede while Ventress’ host family lived in Jerichow. Both traveled to school in another nearby town by bus.
Thomas said she would take a 45-minute bus ride each morning to attend three or four classes each day. She was usually out of class sometime between 1 and 3 p.m., but some days she would stay later to participate in band practice as a flute player.
At first, she had a hard time making friends and participating in class discussions because of the language barrier. The program does not require extensive knowledge of the language to participate. Rathermany participants begin to learn the language by being placed in the immersive atmosphere.
Thomas said she insisted that her classmates speak German to her even if they could speak English. “I had to be adamant about people speaking to me in German, which may have made it harder for me to make connections at first, but it paid off in the end,” she said.
After about a month, she said she was pretty much conversational in German. She said it wasn’t until the second semester that many of her classmates outside of her immediate friends knew much about me “because it was hard to be my normal loud, energetic self with the language barrier.”
Ventress said he had a similar experience at his school at first. Unlike when he began attending ASMSA, he soon realized he was at a regular high school. Many of the students at the German high school were there because they were required to be and did not have as high educational expectations as himself, Ventress said. “So finding other kids with interests and a bubbly attitude like mine was hard,” he said. “Eventually I decided not to care anymore about fitting in too much and acted like myself, and by the end of my exchange, I found more friends doing that than when I was suppressing who I was just to fit in.”
Both had good experiences with their host families. Ventress said his family enjoyed cracking jokes and teasing each other, which he was used to at his own home, although his host family was more direct with their humor. That didn’t prevent him from growing close to the family by the end of his time with them.
“They trusted me a lot as I did with them — taking dogs out all the time, accompanying my host dad on hunts, and buying groceries when they needed them. I never thought I would change from being the oldest of six to being the oldest of only one sister so quickly,” he said.
Maya, his host sister, was an only child. Having an older “brother” in the house was an interesting change for her, he said. He lived upstairs in a loft with his own space, giving him more privacy than he is used to at his own home. He also grew to know extended members of the family who he enjoyed visiting with, he said.
The family Thomas stayed with had previous experience with hosting international students. It was the third year they had hosted a year-long exchange student, she said, and when she arrived, they were hosting another exchange student from Colombia for the fall semester.
The family had two sons, but the older son, who was closer to Thomas’ age, was in the United States as an exchange student for the fall semester. He was scheduled to spend a year in the same exchange program in the U.S. but came home once the COVID-19 pandemic began.
In testament to how much they valued how their own exchange program was going, both Thomas and Ventress were initially instructed to return to the United States because of the pandemic. The CBYX program was closing, and the American students were notified by email one day that they would be returning to the U.S. on the next day.
Thomas wanted to finish her year in Germany, however. She spoke to her host family and then called her own family about a way she could do that. It required her to drop out of the CBYX program. Both families were on board.
“Our program was buying tickets for all students in the midst of all of this, so from their side it was clear that leaving with them was the only option,” Thomas said. “I thought that if I dropped out of the exchange program completely that they couldn’t force me home.”
She then contacted Ventress and told him her plan. He decided to do the same thing, and both his host and own family agreed to the idea. He said besides dropping out of the program, he and Thomas were required to get a new visa and new insurance.
“My host family and natural family were adamant to disagree on the federal decision (for all U.S. residents to return) and made a few calls in order to let me stay in Germany and finish my year. I stayed a whole month longer than our typical 10-month duration in the program. I found myself on my own and officially independent as soon as the U.S. closed its borders from Europe,” he said.
There were originally 48 participants from the U.S. in the program. Besides Thomas and Ventress, only two others arranged to stay in Germany.
Both continued to attend school, although the schools transitioned to remote learning because of the pandemic. Both said the language barrier made school a bit harder during that time as they were forced to deal more with the written language rather than spoken language. Both eventually returned to the physical classroom, but not long before they were to return home.
Despite the somewhat muted end of their journey abroad caused by the pandemic, both had plenty of experiences pre-pandemic that made participating in the exchange even more rewarding.
Ventress said his host family took him to Sweden for a week for his 18th birthday. He also had the opportunity to visit London, England, and Strasbourg, France, for the first time during the New Year’s holiday. He also had his first ski trip in the Alps.
Thomas said she enjoyed the month-long camp with the other American participants at the beginning of the exchange. It was a group she could lean on throughout the year, and it also gave her an excuse to travel throughout the year to various parts of the country.
“In Europe, travel is so much more centralized and doesn’t require a car. I spent lots of hours on trains going to visit Kenny or some of my friends from camp who were scattered all over the country. I got to visit my friends while also getting to see cool new parts of the country,” she said.
As the program ended, the two still had another challenge left — returning to ASMSA for their senior year. Their friends from the Class of 2020 had faced their own challenges during the year. The pandemic forced ASMSA to move to remote instruction in mid-March. While there were hopes that they would be allowed to return to campus at some point in the semester, it soon became evident that the pandemic would not allow that. They missed out on many of the traditional senior-year experiences, including prom and an in-person graduation ceremony.
But now they were gone. Thomas and Ventress were officially members of the Class of 2021, who would have been “their juniors” if they had not participated in the CBYX program. They had not had the opportunity to get to know members of the class for a year. But they did have one advantage — each other.
“I am quite lucky that I had Nina to help me with this year,” Ventress said. “I don’t know how I could re-adapt to American culture as well as just having someone to talk to who is going through the same experience as I am. It gives me closure and hope that I did the right thing when I took the year off. Also, talking about my experiences has been nice as Nina and I nerd out and have flashbacks from time to time.”
He’s also made new friends with other students on his floor in the residence hall, he said.
Thomas said the transition back to ASMSA wasn’t “as crazy” as she originally expected. She said she knew several people already from her new class. Still, it took some time to get used to being back at ASMSA, she said.
“It was definitely odd for the first two weeks or so, being in the same buildings like before but seeing completely different faces. I would say that I made my way into my friend group in this class pretty well, and I feel like sometimes they forget I wasn’t here last year with them. It’s been great knowing I can always go to Kenny, who I’ve known longer than anyone else here and had the same experiences as me,” Thomas said.
Having the opportunity to come back to ASMSA was also refreshing, she said. “ASMSA means a lot to me; otherwise, I wouldn’t have elected to add a whole extra year onto my schooling to be able to return home from Germany and graduate from here,” she said.
Ventress said that having the opportunity to study abroad during high school was worth the extra year.
“Without that experience, I don’t know if I could have ever had another opportunity, even in college. At the end of the day, I realized I had a diplomatic talent as well as a knack for languages, so I saw a goal to incorporate my global interests in my primary goal of engineering in the U.S.,” he said.