America – here we come!

Lessing-Gymnasium at Everett Community College

Oct 12–Nov 3, 2007
German teachers: Volker Schweickhardt, Christine Kössler
American teacher: Elke Dinter
LGW students: Tatjana Brenner, Jana Bühler, Lisa-Maria Kuttner, Isabel Ulrich, Jonas Fischer, Marco Fischer, Florian Fuchs, Lisa Mack (Grade 11), Sina Frank, Tobias Schneider, Robert Sittig, Julia Wohlmann, Yvonne Gehrke, Sabrina Klenk, Jonathan Pfander, Sara Erger, Dana Erger, Julian Herzel (Grade 12)

After a stressful flight, we arrived really tired at the Seattle airport. We had a very nice arrival, because all the American students were waiting at the airport to welcome us.

The next tree days we stayed in a motel in Seattle, called Quality Inn. There we enjoyed the beautiful view of Seattle on top of the Space Needle, shopping and sightseeing. We also took a guided tour of Seattle Underground and tried the fabulous food of America. On Sunday afternoon we met our host families and had our first real American dinner with them.

The Everett Community College (EvCC) was exciting. We could spend some time in different classes, just to watch the American way of teaching their students.

Our weekend-trip to Mountain St. Helens and Mount Rainier was a real flop, because of the bad weather. It was raining all the time and because of the cloudy skies we couldn't see the mountains. One of the three days we stayed in a nice house in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by trees, where Johnny, our guide, showed us a lot of different dances. It was a lot of fun! The next two days were horrible. We had to "survive" in little cabins without any electricity. Our bathroom was outside and very dirty, too. But the food was pretty good and the people had been very nice.

Die Fahrt auf der Fähre verursachte unvorhergesehene Frisuren.	Besuch im Indianerreservat der Tulalips

In the second week we did our presentations in front of different classes. The rest of the week we visited Snoqualmie Falls, celebrated Oktoberfest in school and a few students had the chance to visit Vancouver (Canada).

On our last weekend we had free time with our host families, who took us to some special places like the Museum of Flight and Leavenworth (it's a small town that looks like a Bavarian village).

One of our next trips was the Ingraham High school in Seattle. There, we were able to see the differences between a College and a High school.

Halloween has also been a highlight for us. Almost everybody wore a costume and brought some real Swabian food. It was a cool party and we had a lot of fun doing the American trick or treat. After the Halloween party in school, most of the students went to corn maze or haunted house to get scared by ugly looking creatures.

On our last day we spent some time doing some last minute shopping.

In conclusion, we had a nice trip, but we were also happy to come back to Germany to see our families and friends again.

Sara Erger, Sina Frank, Yvonne Gehrke