A year ago I was a Junior at South Meck High School, taking AP German as a student in the World Language Magnet program. (I attended Waddell Language Academy where I started German immersion in first grade.) I LOVED South Meck’s energizing school spirit and school wide events, making a lot of great friends and lifelong memories. But, after going to Schorndorf, Germany with Frau Wilson’s Spring 2014 exchange group, I also loved the thought of living and studying in Germany on full scholarship my Senior year. During the Schorndorf exchange my German host family, the Blessings, got together with their relatives, which is where I met their cousin who had attended high school in Iowa as part of the Congress Bundestag Youth Exchange (CBYX - http://www.usagermanyscholarship.org/). Talking with her was so cool! When she spoke in English it was perfect teenage English without an accent or any awkward phrases. That was so cool to me - I wanted to be able to do that, but in German! Also, I had a lot of fun in Germany which made be want to be able to spend more time there to get a deeper view of Germany, not just a glance over.
Fast forward to December 2014 when I submitted my online CBYX application. CIEE (http://www.ciee.org/cbyx/) the coordinators for CBYX, contacted me, inviting me to a weekend interview session at the Atlanta Westin Hotel in March 2015. It was amazing to meet so many kids, all high achievers from the Southeast region and Puerto Rico, who had so much going for them. I left Atlanta really excited, hoping that I’d be selected. It wasn’t until after spring break that I found out I was going to be a CBYX scholarship recipient August 2015 – June 2016!!
Keep checking back at as I share about my CBYX experience this school year.
Auf Wiedersehen,
Elizabeth Fisher