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The Story of Amelie

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This story begins with yet another person I have had the pleasure to meet through the German exchange with my high school and a high school in Buxtehude, Germany. Talking about Amelie is one of the easiest things for me because of the fact that I still talk with her on a weekly basis. Amelie is one of the sweetest people I know, and that is saying a lot because she is from Germany. I am totally kidding, sorry Amelie, I know you will be reading this.  

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Connections can be made anywhere, even if there is a language barrier. Amelie made this possible through her amazing English skills. When she came to the United States for the exchange trip, she was housed with one of my good friends named Genevieve. This is how I got to break the ice with Amelie, and from there we were friends. Sometimes it takes a while for me to open up to people, but for whatever reason, it was almost immediately. Our personalities are synced. Over the month that she had been in the states, at the end we had known pretty much everything about each other. I did not even experience that connection with my own German exchange student that was living in my house. We had come from completely different backgrounds and made such a lasting connection with each other has always amazed me. When she left, my heart was torn for people you make that true connection with are sometimes very hard to come by. The next summer I went over to Germany and experienced some things that 18-year-olds do over there with her.

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Amelie is now taking a gap year in which she is writing music and figuring out what she wants to do with the rest of her life. I know she will be bound for greatness and will succeed in every way. I am so excited to see her again. I know this blog was a rant about my friend, but I don’t even care because I will take any opportunity to shout the connection we have from the rooftops. 

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The Story of Amanda

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This week I am going to go back to talking about one of my close foreign friends that I made over the course of my high school year. For a high school student, I am often asked how I know so many people from different countries specifically in Europe. My answer to this question is that I make a point to meet any person that comes into my school during an exchange program for they offer something that has tremendous value, which is the opportunity to learn about different cultures. Amanda is from Amsterdam, Netherlands, and she spent my junior year of high school as an exchange program. Amanda, she had just graduated from the high school equivalent, and she was only 17 years old. It is fairly common for people to graduate high school at 17 years old, but it is a lot more common to take a gap year after senior year and into college. 

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I first met Amanda at the beginning of the year, however at this time she was extremely shy and was still trying to find her way around the school. I tried my best to be her friend, but for some reason, I could not get through to her. At first, this did not disappoint me, I thought it was a cultural difference that I did not understand. It was not until the winter until I could finally break through to her that I wanted to be her friend. To this day we still do not know why it took so long to make this connection, but in the long run, we were very happy that it did happen. Amanda said she had a super rough transition into the American high school, and she was relieved that I was trying to be her friend throughout it all.  

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Over the course of the rest of my junior year, Amanda and I became lifelong friends and I learned about the slight differences in culture between the United States and the Netherlands. That year I ended up convincing her to join the track team and in the spring I asked her to go to prom with me with the most “American” promposal ever. Amanda told me before she left to go home how meaningful it meant that I kept on reaching out to her, and how that completely changed the outcome of her perception of the United States and the whole exchange year. Being kind to one another should always extend far past our language barriers. 

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