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	Letters from students abroad Marie M. << zurück USA 2003 Aurora, Colorado For three weeks I went on a trip to America in my Easter vacations, to Aurora, Colorado, near Denver. Besides me there were two teachers and nine other students from my school there, (three of them were from my class) it was an exchange with the American Gateway-Highschool, Aurora. I stayed with a very nice family, the Rs. I had one host-sister of my age, Aida, and two other siblings: Azra (10) and Fiki (5). The Rs. are from Bosnia and they have been living in America for three years. They want to go back to Bosnia in about three or four years, but I'm not sure whether they will really go back, especially Aida, because she would like to study in America. The Rs' house is very small. It has only three rooms and a bathroom and small kitchen in the living-room). I shared my room with Aida. Because the house is so small it's very comfortable. A little yard without a fence belongs to the house. In the yard is a swing for the youngest daughter, and a small table and some. The father sits there almost every day, except when it is raining outside. After finishing his work, he likes to sit there together with some Bosnian friends, listening to Bosnian music, talking and drinking beer. My host-parents were really nice. The mother, Hata R., works in the American Corporation Retirement, serving citizen residents dinner (she is a waitress). Aida works there, too, three times a week for three hours a day. I'm not sure what the father is doing. I only know that he does something with wooden floors in houses, but I don't know what exactly he is doing. I liked my host-parents, but we sometimes had some communication problems (not because of me), because they don't know English so well, especially the mother (she knows only a few sentences). The father was really nice and we sometimes talked to each other, but he is always away from home or is sitting outside, talking to friends and listening to music and drinking beer (I think he is an alcoholic). Azra was a bit quiet at the beginning, but we got along very well and I think she will be very pretty when she is older. Fiki was very shy at the beginning, but later we played a lot together (she is a very sweet little girl), Aida was pretty nice, too . She is open-minded, so we talked a lot about Europe in comparison to America (our experiences), about the different school-systems in both countries, about the war in the Iraq, Bush, the Bosnian war, life in general… We talked a lot, watched TV together, went shopping or went for a walk in the neighborhood and visited her Movies (three times), we spent a lot of time with one of Aida's friends, Jennifer. She is really cute and very nice. We spent all the weekends with her (she's living near Aida's house) and I sometimes met her in school. I had to go to school in America, too and so we had to get up at 6:30 am every weekday to get the bus right on time to go to school with it, because Aida has no car. I attended a lot of different classes. There are a lot of different subjects in school and the school is a lot bigger than ours (but everything is on one floor). I went to the choir, for example, to classes such as psychology, contemporary living and physical science. Choir was fun, but we had to sing the American anthem everyday before we started singing. Psychology was pretty interesting. We talked about different ways of testing your IQ and did an IQ-test. We also talked about the way an animal or a person can learn something or how you could teach something to an animal or a person. We learned there a lot and the psychology teacher was very nice and pretty young (about 25). The contemporary living class was a bit boring at the beginning, because we had to paint some Easter eggs (I felt like in Elementary school ); a "normal" one and a patriotic one, with the American flag on it. The contemporary living teacher did that with many classes, because she wanted to send the patriotic Easter eggs to a veterans center as an Easter present. After that Easter egg stuff the American students had to do some reports in groups of two or three people or alone, every group about some different themes, like divorce, drugs, AIDS, suicide, food, storms/hurricanes, domestic violence. Some of these reports were boring but some were very interesting. In the lesson, in which there was the report about domestic violence, some women from a crisis-line visited us. This lesson was very tough and emotional. We listened for about three to five minutes to a real call at this crisis-line. We heard a woman shouting and crying, because her husband was beating her mother up in front of her and was nearly killing her mom. She seemed to be very shocked and full panic. After we listened to that call I was shocked . We talked about situations like that and the prevention of domestic violence or violence in general. We also attended a physical science class after the second lunch. There are two lunch breaks; some people go to the first and some go to the second break. You go to the first break if you go to a classroom with a number under 600 in your 5th lesson, to the second if you go to a classroom with a number higher than 600 . If you go to the first lunch, you have the 5th period after lunch. We went to both lunch breaks, because there was a possibility to meet some of our American friends. And there were friends who had to go to the first break, others to the second one. After lunch we went to physics, because some friends of ours had to go there. I don't like physics so much, but the physics class was very interesting and fun, also because of the nice teacher. On the weekends I did something together with Aida and Jennifer or only with Jennifer, because Aida had to work on Saturday afternoon. The weekends were really funny and we had a barbecue every weekend. On school days I went to "7'eleven" in the 7th period with Anniki, Maxim and some German and Brazilian friends (they are exchange students there for one year) to buy some coffee or some candy, because the hosts of Maxim and Anniki and my host went to the 7th period and we and our friends didn't. So we went to "7'eleven" in our free period. ("7'eleven" is a shop where you can get things like in a gas station in Germany such as drinks, food, magazines etc., but actually it is not a gas station). After that I spent my afternoons at home, with Aida or with German or American friends. In general I really enjoyed my time and I'm glad that I went on this trip. I think I learned a lot about America and also about Germany and Europe !!! And I got to know a lot of people and hope we'll stay in contact. I also recognized how good it is to live in Germany or in Berlin in comparison to other countries (That's only my personal view!). WE don't call our country "The Land Of The Free", but we are freer or have greater freedom than others (countries as well as people) in several ways. I would go to America again, but I think it's true what my host parents told me on my first day: " America is good for a visit, but not for a life time." Marie M. (UIIc) May 2003