Foreign Exchange Students

Starting on Wednesday of this week, we had four new German exchange students in our sociology class. At first, I was too tired to notice the new kids sitting in some of our desks around the room. After, we started to learn little things about how different their lives were compared to ours. For example, the drinking age in Germany is 16 years old while ours is the age of 21. Another was that their school schedule is more like College. Instead of having eight different periods for 50 minutes they have certain classes on different days at specific times. They claimed that everything in the U.S is bigger ranging from products like cereal boxes to other things. It was interesting to hear from teenagers that lived in another country. Although, our fashion may be different or our music may not be the same, it seemed to me that the teens seemed comfortable with us. There was no doubt that they were intrigued by how our class worked. I tried to picture myself and a few friends going to another country; then going to school there and experiencing it all like the German kids in our class. Although they didn't say anything was too out of ordinary when they toured Chicago, I'm positive they went through culture shock as they got the tour of our school and met a variety of students that were unique in their own ways. As much as they say our country is as similar as theirs, we're very different on many levels.