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If someone had asked about a year after my return to Germany how I liked
my stay in the United States as an Exchange student I would have claimed
America is boring, the people are conservative and superficial and nothing
is the way you would expect it to be.
If I had been asked the same question
one day later I would probably have felt tears burning in my eyes,
saying that
I will move over there after University, that I miss my friends and that I
should have stayed over there in the first place to start my senior year
with my best friend Janine Seemer.
Of course all of this was before
George W. was voted president. ************* It is August 21, 1994 when I get off the airplane in Ontario, California,
where my host family picks me up from the airport. Up to that moment
California has been as expected but when I first see the strange family I will have to live with for the next 10
months of my life I realize the momentousness of my naive and
crude decision. What the hell have I done? I am going to be miles and miles away from home, my
family and friends. And life in Germany is not going to stop and
wait for my return.
If you keep going on the 215 Freeway towards Las Vegas - past San Bernardino
and the mountains - you end up in the Mojave Desert, also
called High Desert. About ten minutes after you take a last look at some
palm trees and grass, you reach the first bigger city, which actually are four
cities (Hesperia, Victorville, Apple Valley and Lucerne Valley). Hesperia is where I will have to spend the next 10 months. A dusty city
with nothing but one story houses with hardly any green and flowery front
or backyards. There is merely one sidewalk on Main Street and the only
vegetation seem
to be some cactuses and other weird desert plants.
Without letting my host family know how horrible I feel
I go to bed crying in my new pink room right after dinner. Without a
clue that for the following weeks I will be falling asleep and waking up with
tears all over my face almost every single day.
The next morning I get up and find myself a bottle of tequila which I drink most
of. The last of alcohol for the following three months.
*************
The first week passes by, one day worse than the next. I talk to
my mom sobbing on the phone and she almost agrees on letting me come back home.
Of course my dad ruins my plans by talking her out of it. I call my
best friend Isabelle who is spending the same year as an exchange
student in Missouri. It helps knowing she is not exactly happy either.
Suddenly I am pretty sure that even though I am going to be 17 next
month I am just way too young to be in a foreign country all by myself. I
come to realize that I will not be graduating with my class at home, the people I
have gone to school with all my life, but a whole year after everyone
else. I figure I am also going to lose all my close friends and no one
will care about me when I get back home.
The one good thing that week is a meeting with my local coordinator,
Shellie Martinson, who will be responsible for me throughout my
stay in the US. She works for the organization sponsoring me and
spends a lot of time calming me down. My master plan is to move in with her
and her family. Unfortunately in
situations like that my master plans never work out.
Another better experience is Denise, a woman I become friends with and
who takes me on a trip to Lake Havesue, which turns out to be real fun.
Once I also go out with her son Cory who takes me to some amusement park where
I have to watch him play computer games most of the evening. Well, what
else can you expect from a 15-year-old guy?
By the end of my second week
in the US I have lost nearly ten pounds, which really concerns my host
parents since I am still not eating.
*************
September 1st is my first day of school which really sucks because
everyone else has already started two days before. Hesperia High is just
as big as most Californian schools. Around 4000 students go there which
is way too much for the school's facilities. So they have to put
the students on three different tracks. Two tracks are in school
while the third one is on break - this changes every two months. Of
course the only person at school I know is Cory, who is off-track at the
time I start classes.
They put me in the senior class and I get to my first class room at the
beginning of 3rd period after some student has shown me around.
Everything is very disappointing. First of all he campus does not meet any of the expectations I have. It is
neither a
nice looking two or three story building nor does it have red lockers in the
hallways like you usually see on those US TV Shows like "Beverly Hills
90210" or "Saved by the Bell" (you cannot have a true
high school experience without the lockers, now can you?). The one story
class rooms look like those containers you see at large construction
sites and are spread all across campus. Small gray (not red!) lockers
are located on the
outside walls. Of course they don't even give me one of those. There is
neither grass nor nice benches to sit on. Instead the ground is covered with
desert sand which keeps getting stuck in your hair, clothing and eyes
because it is extremely windy. One thing is for sure: This is not West
Beverly High.
I go to Hesperia High for exactly 2 1/2 days. So far I have eaten
lunch in the bathroom all by myself, my drama partner
who is supposed to act in a video with me is too drunk and stoned to sit
straight in his chair and he is desperate to show off the gun in his
locker. On my third day I decide to leave school early pretending to be sick. I am
certain that nothing on earth can make me come back to this school or
keep me from flying back home.
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