Lit & Civ: Experience With Foreigners

I have more experience with foreigners than the average American.

One day in the spring of my senior year of high school, I stepped on a sheet of paper as I walked into my German classroom. It was the foreign exchange program info sheet of a girl named Rebecca Rutscheit from Meschede, Germany. I looked at her picture and just knew. The deadline for the program happened to be that afternoon. I ran home ecstatic. I had to have this girl as my foreign exchange student. My parents were shocked when I asked; I had expressed no interest in doing a foreign exchange program before. We talked it over and finally my mom beamed and told me to run and call the guy before we lost our chance.

"I'm sorry, Miss Watson, but there's no one left in the program named Rutscheit. She must have been selected already," the man on the line told me. I felt defeated. He suggested I look online at the other applicants. It was no use. I wanted Rebecca, not just any ol' exchange student. I didn't see any applicants online that made me want to call the man back.

Ring, ring!

I jumped. "Miss Watson?" the man asked.

"Yes, Miss Watson speaking."

"I found her! I found your girl! It's Rebecca Kutscheit, not Rutscheit! She's still available!"

***

Two weeks later my parents and I waited anxiously at the airport holding a sign. We hoped she would be a fraction as sweet as she sounded and looked on her info sheet. When I saw, it was like meeting a long lost friend. She threw her arms around me, kissed me on the cheek, and said, in the cutest German accent I've still ever heard, "Oh, hello! I'm Rebecca. It's so very nice to meet you. I'm so very thankful you chose me to be your friend." (She told me later that she'd rehearsed that speech the whole way on the plane so she could pretend she spoke English. :P) I am too, because she has remained my best friend in the world.

***

That was five years ago. She lived with me that time for a month, shadowing me at school, and begging me to translate slang in school to proper English that she could understand. I loved being able to speak rapid-fire German with her without anyone knowing what we were saying. On her first day, though, a boy in my theater class asked her, "So... do you guys think you were the good guys in World War II? Gassing people and stuff? I mean do they like teach you that that was right?" She looked at me, confused.

"Kate, what he mean?" I stared at her guiltily. "Translate please!" she requested in her sing-song voice.

"Yeah, translate!" shouted the class, all waiting to hear her answer. I felt my jaw tighten.

"I refuse to translate that question. Rebecca, tell the class what your classmates said in Germany when you told them you were going to live in Dallas, Texas."

"Ahh yes! They said, 'Oh, they murdered the president!'" Yeah. That's our reputation abroad, Texans. Is it fair to judge all of us on the actions of one man? I think not.

***

That summer I visited Rebecca in Germany for nearly a month. It would take me too many blogs to describe my experiences there. I am proud to say that I could easily converse with everyone, including Rebecca's maternal grandfather, whom her father refused to visit because he couldn't understand a word he said. This grandfather told me I speak excellent German. That was one of the highlights of the trip, since Rebecca's dad made such a fuss over how I wouldn't be able to speak to the grandparents.

***

The following summer she came to visit for the summer with her best friend, Carina. Carina speak very little English, to the point of hardly being able to communicate with my dad without a translator nearby. She had never been to America before and couldn't believe the Stockyards were real.

***

Last year we were fortunate enough to live together for the whole semester. Rebecca finished high school and wanted to live with me for a bit before going to college. It was a happy coincidence that my roommate was going to London for the fall semester, so Rebecca came and took her place. She was in the IEP program at TCU.

***

We try to meet on Skype once a week. We have always kept in touch through weekly emails, Facebook messages, et cetera, but Skype has been a real godsend. Now I have it on my iPhone so she can get ahold of me no matter where I am. I miss having her here with me, but it's not so bad, since I get to see her face-to-face on a regular basis. She suffers from reverse culture shock. She loves America and misses it desperately.

I am up for the Fulbright scholarship for Germany and one of the main reasons I want to go is so that I can spend nine months exploring Europe with Rebecca and all of the other friends I've made in Germany. She is "pressing her thumbs" for me everyday in hopes that we will end up living together again. Although my hopes are fairly high that she will eventually move to America, because she belongs here.

Needless to say, I highly recommend foreign exchange programs. I basically mail-ordered my best friend.