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Prom.
To mention the adolescent-American rite-of-passage causes a decidedly bright, composed, 16-year-old girl like Janina Tremmel to gush with excitement:
“Oh, yes. I’m so excited to go. Jeanne and I were talking about prom a lot: the dresses, what we’ll wear, how it looks and stuff like that,” says Janina speaking much faster than before.
She giggles at the mention of a prom date. She can’t wait. It’s experiences like prom that brought her here. The chance to learn about a culture and experience it, all in one breath.
They don’t have proms in Germany.
“I wanted to experience a new school system, because in Germany the schools are kind of boring,” says Janina, who is one of Yellow Medicine East’s foreign exchange students this year. “You just go to school to learn. And I wanted to go to America because of homecoming and prom. And I wanted to learn the language, make new friends and to see America.”
Providing her a window that looks out into America is her host family the Rosenaus: Dale, Stephanie, Brian and Jeanne. Jeanne, Janina’s prom sounding board, is also a junior at YME.
Until beginning her stay at the Rosenau’s on July 31, Janina’s knowledge of America was limited to the six years she spent learning English and—T.V.
“In school we just learn the language, but on T.V. we learn a lot about America—so it’s mostly T.V.,” says Janina with the soft ‘zzz’ and bent vowels of her German accent.
A friend told her about the exchange program. Janina had always been interested in America and she began to gather information.
“Then I talked to my parents,” says Janina. “And my dad was a little bit skeptical at the beginning. But my mom, she thought it was awesome, so we found an organization and it happened really fast.”
And then she landed at the Rosenaus.
Mother Stephanie, now sitting at Janina’s side, says the family has hosted international students before. “It’s really fun,” says Stephanie looking over at the beaming teenager beside her. “There’s a lot of statistics about other countries and stuff—’this is what they do and this is how they are’—but you really never find out about people until you live with them. Then you find out that this is how they are.”
What has Stephanie found out?
“They’re pretty alike no matter what country they come from. Teenagers are teenagers.” At this the pair laugh at the generalities that mark adolescence.
Janina’s life in Germany isn’t much different than the one she now shares with the Rosenau’s at their farmstead outside of Sacred Heart.
Janina says she grew-up in a big house in a village of about 300 people near Hamburg: one dog and three cats, two younger sisters (Jessica and Laura), a mother—Christine—and father—Stefan.
There are things that have surprised Janina during her stay in America; including American’s affinity for texting and the distances found in such a vast country (at times the distance from a rural farm house outside of Sacred Heart to anywhere can seem immeasurable).
What’s also surprised the teenager are her feelings for home. “Sometimes I miss them a lot. I never realized that I’d miss them so much, but I do,” says Janina.
The Rosenau family has made homesickness easier to bear and Stephanie says that task is made manageable by having like-aged children at home.
Says Stephanie, “It makes it easy to have a foreign exchange student when you have kids in the house doing the same thing. Then they stay active, there’s more for them to do, they meet more people. The time people should really think about doing it is when your busy with you’re own kids.”
The same time you’re busy with homecoming and prom and all those other moments that young lives pass through: those moments that make American culture so unique.
“You should definitely do it for the experience alone” Janina says as recommendation for her journey. “You don’t have many chances to experience something like this.”
This she knows. And she hasn’t even gone to prom yet.
Prom.
To mention the adolescent-American rite-of-passage causes a decidedly bright, composed, 16-year-old girl like Janina Tremmel to gush with excitement:
“Oh, yes. I’m so excited to go. Jeanne and I were talking about prom a lot: the dresses, what we’ll wear, how it looks and stuff like that,” says Janina speaking much faster than before.
She giggles at the mention of a prom date. She can’t wait. It’s experiences like prom that brought her here. The chance to learn about a culture and experience it, all in one breath.
They don’t have proms in Germany.
“I wanted to experience a new school system, because in Germany the schools are kind of boring,” says Janina, who is one of Yellow Medicine East’s foreign exchange students this year. “You just go to school to learn. And I wanted to go to America because of homecoming and prom. And I wanted to learn the language, make new friends and to see America.”
Providing her a window that looks out into America is her host family the Rosenaus: Dale, Stephanie, Brian and Jeanne. Jeanne, Janina’s prom sounding board, is also a junior at YME.
Until beginning her stay at the Rosenau’s on July 31, Janina’s knowledge of America was limited to the six years she spent learning English and—T.V.
“In school we just learn the language, but on T.V. we learn a lot about America—so it’s mostly T.V.,” says Janina with the soft ‘zzz’ and bent vowels of her German accent.
A friend told her about the exchange program. Janina had always been interested in America and she began to gather information.
“Then I talked to my parents,” says Janina. “And my dad was a little bit skeptical at the beginning. But my mom, she thought it was awesome, so we found an organization and it happened really fast.”
And then she landed at the Rosenaus.
Mother Stephanie, now sitting at Janina’s side, says the family has hosted international students before. “It’s really fun,” says Stephanie looking over at the beaming teenager beside her. “There’s a lot of statistics about other countries and stuff—’this is what they do and this is how they are’—but you really never find out about people until you live with them. Then you find out that this is how they are.”
What has Stephanie found out?
“They’re pretty alike no matter what country they come from. Teenagers are teenagers.” At this the pair laugh at the generalities that mark adolescence.
Janina’s life in Germany isn’t much different than the one she now shares with the Rosenau’s at their farmstead outside of Sacred Heart.
Janina says she grew-up in a big house in a village of about 300 people near Hamburg: one dog and three cats, two younger sisters (Jessica and Laura), a mother—Christine—and father—Stefan.
There are things that have surprised Janina during her stay in America; including American’s affinity for texting and the distances found in such a vast country (at times the distance from a rural farm house outside of Sacred Heart to anywhere can seem immeasurable).
What’s also surprised the teenager are her feelings for home. “Sometimes I miss them a lot. I never realized that I’d miss them so much, but I do,” says Janina.
The Rosenau family has made homesickness easier to bear and Stephanie says that task is made manageable by having like-aged children at home.
Says Stephanie, “It makes it easy to have a foreign exchange student when you have kids in the house doing the same thing. Then they stay active, there’s more for them to do, they meet more people. The time people should really think about doing it is when your busy with you’re own kids.”
The same time you’re busy with homecoming and prom and all those other moments that young lives pass through: those moments that make American culture so unique.
“You should definitely do it for the experience alone” Janina says as recommendation for her journey. “You don’t have many chances to experience something like this.”
This she knows. And she hasn’t even gone to prom yet.
