GRANGER High is a giant school with about 3,000 students. The students come from many different parts of the world. The different variety of the cultures here are crazy and intense, and students also come here from different parts of the world on an exchange program to get an education.

“Being in the exchange program was kind of a lot of work,” Robin Trutwin (12) said. “You have to do a lot of paperwork, and applications, and they interview you,” he said.  “Of course there are challenges being away from home, like it’s different here, and getting homesick and missing your family,” Trutwin said.

Being away from home for a long time can be very difficult, especially in a different country. Many things are different here from the landscape to the way the school systems work.

“We didn’t have mountains where I lived back in Germany, it’s just kind of flatland and hills,” Trutwin said. “The school systems are different too, you guys have a lot more freedom to choose what you want to do. Differences …like, we have to learn English in kindergarten and here you get to pick your own classes,” Trutwin said.

Things are different everywhere you go, maybe in the slightest difference, but it’s a change. With students coming here, it can affect the students that are already here.

“It’s really interesting because sometimes when we talk, sometimes he doesn’t understand our slang,” David Nguyen (11) said. “Sometimes he wants to do new things new to him but for us it’s normal, like Reese’s Peanut butter cups, he is always eating them because, they don’t have them in Germany,” he said.

Meeting new people in life can either be a curse or a blessing. They can show a person how to look at things from a different perspective and how to appreciate what some people take for granted.

“He wants to learn how to drive because he hasn’t driven before, and that’s insane to me because I’m so used to just going out and getting in my car,” he said. “There are also little things like the food here. He thinks it’s weird but to us it’s so good and he has different fast food places here than there so I think that’s a little weird,” Nguyen said.

The point of an exchange program is to help a student with his or her education and let the student have an experience he or she won’t forget. The student gets to see things he or she wouldn’t normally see; Trutwin saw Yellowstone National Park and was amazed, because he hasn’t seen anything like it.

“Oh yeah, seeing Yellowstone was absolutely breathtaking and it wasn’t something I have ever expected to see, and that all goes back to things being different,” he said.