In Pursuit of Connection
250 exchange stories

The woman in the middle? That's Seneca from Aiken, SC. This spring, she got her first passport and crossed the Atlantic for the very first time, bringing her younger son Carson along. Eight years ago, her older son Jahleel (second from left) traveled to Germany as a GAPP exchange student and found a second family in the Schmidtborns. The friendship never faded. This spring, the two families finally took a picture together on Marienplatz, Munich. Seneca and host mom Dorothea became the kind of friends who couldn't stop talking to each other. Pictured here with father Tim and younger son Nikklas. None of it exists without Jahleel. 

My choice of German as a lifelong passion and career began with GAPP. Unforgettable experiences like this with my host mother at the East-West German border (pictured here) are the reason why. In 1985, this Mexican-American kid from LA wasn't aware he was experiencing history or how life-changing those three weeks in Germany would become. 40 years on I know my life would have gone a very different way without them. 
 

March 2022: We were the first GAPP group to visit Germany as COVID restrictions eased and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began. Determined ambassadors, our students forged lasting friendships with their German partners. In Munich, before boarding our flight home, they held hands and looked out into the world desperate for peace. One win for diplomacy.

On the last day of my stay in Germany the host family and I went on a beautiful hike through the forests in the area. The views were absolutely surreal and it felt like a perfect way to end this trip that truly changed my life. 

I joined GAPP wanting to help students broaden their worldview. I never imagined that the program would literally change my life. During our first exchange, I formed friendships with the teachers from our partner school. After the exchange ended, one of the teachers, Jens, and I continued talking regularly, and our friendship continued to grow. Eventually, friendship turned into love. I will always be grateful to GAPP for bringing us together. It gave us both an unexpected gift: each other.

As a student in 1994, I had a wonderful host family. For Easter, we three daughters – myself included – got the same over-sized Easter bunny. That made me feel truly welcome. The last day, it began to snow. That's when I started hoping we wouldn’t be able to fly back. That April, I fell in love with Kansas, its people, with the US and its language. Today, when I am in Oklahoma with my GAPP students, I feel the same way. We have been lucky enough to never experience a tornado in OK. But a little one the day of our departure...? Why not!?

We took the students from the Gymnasium to Point Alpha. We learned a lot about East and West, and together understood how dangerous borders can be, even borders we can't see, and how important it is, even now, to keep reaching out to others so that something like this never happens again. The students understood why people fled East Germany, and they now value their freedoms all the more for it.

This was 6 of us Americans in Germany, cheering on the home team at a World Cup watch party. Supporting Germany was so much fun, even though it's not where we're originally from. It gave us a taste of German pride and brought us closer, not just with the German exchange students, but with their friends too.

I went on a bike tour around Munich with my host family, and it is one of my favorite moments with my exchange partner. It was that moment I realized what was truly waiting for me at the end of my junior year, and it was magical. I cannot describe with words the feeling of being in a foreign country and being able to experience a completely new culture for the first time in my life. I will forever remember the different connections I made, and I couldn't be more grateful for them.

My friends and I had matching outfits that day, and as we were walking, we jokingly held hands and galloped down the pathway. My other friend snapped a photo just as we all looked back, and we had strikingly similar expressions.

I first met my host family in October 2022 when I came to the US. We had an instant and undeniable connection. When Sarah came to Germany we had the best time and when it was time for her to return we cried so hard. However we knew that this could never be the ending to our story! We’ve visited each other twice by now, Sarah and Laura became the sisters I never had and we are in close contact to this day! I can‘t imagine life without them and I‘m beyond grateful I got to know them through GAPP!

I first met Aubrey and her family in September 2019, never imagining they would become such an important part of my life. What began as an exchange quickly turned into a lifelong friendship. Aubrey became the sister I never knew I needed. Even when COVID-19 kept us apart, we stayed close, texting constantly and supporting each other from across the ocean. Seven years later, we still talk almost every day and have shared countless reunions, adventures and unforgettable memories. The GAPP program gave me more than an exchange: a second family, a lifelong sister and a forever home.

In the train station in Berlin, some other German students and I had found a public piano, and so with time to spare, one of the German students began to play songs. We were all able to huddle around and sing songs together in the station, and it was something very special to me because in that moment, I knew that this is what the exchanges are about. I had only met these people just a few months before, and yet we were all able to connect together through music. I'd realized that our differences aren't so different after all.

We feel uniquely blessed to have our 40-year partnership with Faust-Gymnasium Staufen, as it started based on a genealogical connection between the sister cities of Jasper (Indiana, USA) and Pfaffenweiler (Baden-Württemberg, Germany) rather than a chance match-up. The Faust-Gymnasium Staufen group contains five students living in Pfaffenweiler. The collage represents the deep connections this exchange has allowed us to cultivate all across the Markgräflerland region -- between current exchange participants from Staufen and environs (top half of collage) and between Jasper and Pfaffenweiler (bottom half). We are looking forward to the next 40 years and beyond!

A group of seven students and two teachers from Lee's Summit R7 School District visited Germany this summer as part of the district's exchange program with the Städtisches Gymnasium an der Hönne in Menden. The two schools have been maintaining this relationship since 1990. Students experienced ten days of life in a German family and attended school with their hosts. Additionally, students went on field trips to Cologne and Münster. After their homestay, students traveled around Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland for seven days to experience the treasured cultural heritage of the German-speaking world.

We went out to dinner one evening for my partner's brother's birthday. This was my first dinner with the whole family (her parents and two older brothers), and I was really nervous about being all together with them for the first time. I actually ended up having a really fun time — we laughed and talked, and they even introduced me to a new card game called CABO. I'd never heard of it before, but after playing I made sure to buy the game for myself to bring home and introduce to my family!