And it's about time.
The couple of foreign exchange students I've had in the past have been French speakers, one from Normandy and the other from Switzerland.
Today I was helping administer a testing debacle at school, and periodically could get away and go check up on my own classes. I walked into one class and started explaining a topic, then stopped and looked at a student I didn't recognize.
"Who the heck are you?"
"I'm a new student. I'm foreign exchange, from Germany."
My face must have lit up. We exchanged a few sentences in German, the language I last studied in high school in 1982. His face lit up, especially when I said that I would rely on him to help me relearn and practice my German.
Ausgezeichnet!
Even though I'm sure that what little German I speak is heavily accented, I also know that it's comforting to hear one's own language when completely surrounded by another. I hope he enjoys the experience as much as I will.
"Nein, das ist mein Kartoffelsalat!" is one of the only phrases I remember from my high school German, but I use it whenever I happen to get a German speaking foreign exchange student. They laugh. That's good enough for me. :)
ReplyDeleteI have a student from the Czech Republic. She's very sweet, but her face lit up when I told her about WestFest and the kolaches that are a rite of passage literally on I35 between Austin and Dallas. She's going to ask her host family to take her down there. There are many families who still speak Czech and who know the history of Czechs in Texas.
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