Many foreign exchange students have attended Pattonville High School in the past few years but senior Sadie Dasovich became a foreign exchange student herself. She studied for a year in Jena, Thuringia, in the country of Germany. The school she attended was quite different from Pattonville.
“The school had 1st-13th grade and had fun classes like weaving! I even learned how to survey the land,” Dasovich said.
Core classes such as biology, chemistry and physics also rotated every three weeks, which she said “wasn’t good for learning.”
Dasovich said the German culture isn’t as friendly as the American culture. She said that when waiting in lines or walking on the streets, “No one has small talk. It’s like it doesn’t exist there.”
In her small town, there was limited shopping of only two major stores so everyone basically wore the same style of clothing.
Unlike in America, German teenagers have more freedom.
“For my cooking class the teacher would send us to the local market to pick up groceries to cook for lunch.”
Her German host family ate bread and cold cuts every day with every meal so she missed the BBQ and steak that she had back home in Missouri.
Along with the food, there were other things she missed while she was away.
“I missed all my friends when I was in Germany but I knew I was going to go back to the states sometime, but now I miss all my German friends because I might never see them again.”
When asked if she would recommend the foreign exchange program to any other PHS student, she quickly responded “Of course! It’s a fantastic experience. It doesn’t matter what country you visit, it’s an amazing journey. Now I have close friends all over the world that I would have never met.”
