Hero photograph
Student Exchange  - Lydia McMillan
 

Student Exchange - Lydia McMillan

Lydia McMillan Year 13 —

Four days after my last NCEA exam I travelled with a group of New Zealand students to Germany to take part in an exchange. My host family lived in Aachen, a city very close to both Belgium and the Netherlands.

School was very different. It was co-ed and there was no uniform. There was also a huge range of subjects, I did ten while most of the students did more. I only had four weeks of school because of the Christmas break and the New Zealand exchange students’ trip to Berlin.

Christmas in Germany is a big deal. It lasted three days. During these three days every meal had three courses. It was also very different from in New Zealand.  My host family would sing carols around the piano and presents were unwrapped on Christmas eve. The Christmas markets were one of my favourite things to go and see in the lead up to Christmas. They looked beautiful at nighttime and had delicious food.

Some highlights were my host family taking me to Paris for three days and going to Berlin with the other New Zealand exchange students. We had lots of spare time in Berlin and spent it going around the shopping malls, to Ku’damm and the Berlin wall.

Overall it was a great trip and I had a lot of fun. I was lucky to have a very generous and helpful host family, who took me to a range of nearby places like Maastricht, Belgium, Cologne, and Bonn. My German also improved considerably in the two months.