Bridging the gap between people and policies: German, American students swap countries in a cultural exchange program that is thriving in its 10th year here

Sep 14, 2009 (Yakima Herald-Republic - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- GABC | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- YAKIMA, Wash. -- They're impressed with the vastness of this place, the open space and just how much bigger everything seems -- from people's homes to the hills and rugged, rural landscape.

Their new surroundings still feel a bit foreign. After all, many things here -- not just the language -- are different from their native country.

There's no homecoming dance at their high school in Germany, for example. And there's no 420-year-old castle here in Yakima.

Something else in particular also is missing, according to 16-year-old Anna Maria Peters, a 10th-grader who attends the Ernst-Barlach-Gymnasium in GA 1/4strow, a city near the Baltic Sea in northwestern Germany.

"Here is no trees," she says. "It's very strange."

Peters is one of a dozen students from the Ernst-Barlach-Gymnasium taking part in a cultural exchange this month through the German American Partnership Program, two months shy of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The wall, erected in 1961, separated West Germany from East Germany until Nov. 9, 1989, and symbolized the Iron Curtain between Western Europe and the Eastern Bloc.

Peters' hometown of GA 1/4strow is located in what was once East Germany.

She recently traveled through Snoqualmie Pass on her way to Yakima from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, and saw the landscape change from dense evergreens in the mountains to the arid shrub-steppe of the Valley. The absence of trees -- other than orchards -- was only one of her first impressions.

"You have so much space," Peters says. And, "Everything, it's so green. The grass is so green. We don't know this in Germany."

In general in Germany, she says, "It's darker and browner." Yakima, she says, "is a very beautiful town, I think."

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Sponsored by the German Foreign Office and U.S. Department of State, the student exchange program represents one of the largest people-to-people connections between the U.S. and Germany, according to the nonprofit's Web site at www.goethe.de/gapp.

"The friendships that we build because there's stability of place and the people involved allow our kids to see far more individuals than they see policies," says Rick Beck, a German teacher at West Valley Junior High and High School and the coordinator of the local German American Partnership Program (GAPP).

"That's true exchange: People getting to know people rather than countries getting to know countries," says Beck, 54. "We're opening the doors."

Founded in 1999 with Beck's help, the local GAPP program is celebrating its 10th anniversary. This is the sixth group of German students to travel to Yakima through the partnership for a monthlong exchange.

The delegation, made up of 10 girls and two boys, arrived Sept. 1. Two more students from the Ernst-Barlach-Gymnasium are studying here for the entire school year. They are all living with West Valley families, attending classes at West Valley High School and experiencing the American way of life.

"Everything's bigger (in America) than in Germany," says Malte Kreja, 15. Like most German students on this trip, it's his first time to the United States.

"I want to learn the language, and I want to see the land," he says.

He also wants to see the Pacific Ocean -- he might have to settle for Puget Sound -- and attend a Mariners game.

Carolin Sternhagen is looking forward to trying peanut butter, going to an American McDonald's and attending the high school's homecoming dance.

"The homecoming dance is the alpha and the omega, the pinnacle, of their experience here," Beck says. "They don't have that kind of event as part of their school."

Also on the itinerary: a visit to the Museum of Flight and the Space Needle in Seattle, and trips to Mount Rainier and Mount St. Helens.

The German students will also visit Yakima Valley Community College and Central Washington University, as well as schools in the West Valley School District.

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Beck hopes the visit will help shatter some American stereotypes.

"They think that everybody lives like (a character on) '90210' does," he says. "Some of the stereotypes do play out" -- the popularity of fast food, he says, for example, and the sheer size of the country. But, "America is not exactly the way it is portrayed on television."

Beck wants the German students to see that -- and maybe begin to build long-lasting relationships, like the one he has with a German colleague through which this exchange was born.

Now in his 20th year with the West Valley School District, Beck formed the local GAPP partnership with the help of a teacher in Germany after participating in the Fulbright Classroom Teacher Exchange Program.

During the 1997-98 academic year, he taught at the Ernst-Barlach-Gymnasium in GA 1/4strow. And Ilka Heinrichs taught in West Valley.

Now, every other year, a group of West Valley students led by Beck travels to GA 1/4strow. In alternating years, a group of German students led by Heinrichs comes here.

"I really loved (living in) Yakima," says Heinrichs, 48, who returned to GA 1/4strow after the Fulbright job swap. She's back in Yakima this month, chaperoning her German students during the exchange.

She says she particularly enjoys the people of Yakima, how friendly they are, as well as the wide open spaces of the Valley's landscape.

Next June, a group of West Valley students will visit Germany for a month. Many of their families are now hosting German students.

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One of the highlights -- and traditions -- of the Yakima visit is a 21/2-hour scavenger hunt that involves the German students and their host families. They all meet at the junior high, then drive around Yakima and Union Gap looking for specific locations.

Their clues are photographs of many sites, such as the log cabin at the St. Joseph Mission at the Ahtanum, and the Pioneer Cemetery and Central Washington Agricultural Museum in Union Gap.

The goal is to help the exchange students get to know the area, and to prompt discussion about the similarities and differences between Yakima and GA 1/4strow.

West Valley, which has sent about 80 students to Germany for the exchange over the past decade, is the only local school district currently involved with the GAPP program. But according to the GAPP Web site, there are 47 others statewide. Between Germany and the United States, there are about 760 partnerships in all.

Through the program, about 5,000 American students and teachers visit Germany each year, and another 8,000 German students and teachers come to the U.S.

In West Valley, students can start taking German classes in junior high. In Germany, however, students start to learn English in fifth grade. Inevitably, the German students speak English more fluently than the American students speak German.

They have until Sept. 29 to practice together.

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